By 1993 he is hot on the trail, after many years of failed experiment, towards a breakthrough in the design of a "disposable" acoustic guitar that can be made from plastic, that will sound as good as any wooden instrument. Such a design has been long sought after by many luthiers but they are mostly grounded in the minutia of traditional wooden guitar construction methods and Steve knows very little of these niceties, having concentrated on 'plank' electric solids. Not only does the new formula work well acoustically but when fitted with a transducer "bug", the plastic guitar cannot be induced to feed-back, even at massive output amplifier volume...

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It is a confidence trick on the part of the DJ (again). The royalties are truly miniscule in reality compared to what has been promised and both Steve and his partner are bankrupted. Studio costs have been enormous and the guitarist customers have gone elsewhere to have their instruments "race-tuned". Twenty years of hard-won good will is lost forever. Deep anger.

Severe clinical depression sets in with a large smattering of alcohol. What follows for Steve is a nervous breakdown, divorce and a period of psychiatric care, culminating in a failed suicide attempt. rosalouisa

Unable to face the derision of those around him at his misfortune he moves to Wales and begins, in convalescence, to surf the local library internet terminal to further his knowledge regarding particle physics. It is at this point that he discovers the area of science known as sonoluminescence. He realises that this is the key to his previous hypothesis and that the machine he has already designed fits the bill perfectly and that he needs to make no alterations at all to it; he'd got its proportions right first time around. He launches into postal land mail communication again with The Ministry of Defence, in the hope that they will understand the possible connection between sonoluminescence and string. He supplies drawings and all that he can give in terms of written specification.

He is shocked to discover that they don't have any research facilities of any kind and that everything is always put out to private contractors. They will not even discuss sonoluminescence and confine him to the "Crank and nutter" folder. Again. Their replies to his communication are meaningless and irrelevant, abounding with mis-quotes and demonstrate that the subject has not been given anything more than a cusory sneering glance:-

From the UK MOD:- "Mr. Acworth's jump from the particle physics world 'Superstring Theory' to music strings is a quantum leap in the wrong direction, and I'm afraid a perfect example of the old proverb 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'. Superstrings were nothing to do with musical string or any other strings for that matter, the word was used as a convenient description of the matter that forms the basic building blocks of the universe... Using a coiled magnetic field to contain plasma is not a new idea; it is the basis of the dream of cheap electricity from ZETA to the present day 'Tokomaks'. An open-ended coil will not contain plasma; the system must be a toroid. Apart from anything else a wound string built on the basis of a music string would not have the required strength. I cannot see any future in pursuing this idea."

"A wound musical string such as a guitar string relies on the central core for its strength. The coiled section is there to add weight, and therefor lower the frequency; it adds nothing to the strength of the string. The only use for the 'flat' wound string is to enable a rock and roll guitarist to slide his or her fingers over the fret board more quickly. The sustain properties of a musical instrument depend upon the material of which the instrument is made and the manner of playing, rather than the string. A violin has sustain because the bow constantly vibrates the string; indeed the body of a violin is heavily varnished in an attempt to quieten the instrument. On the other hand an acoustic guitar has poor sustain and is only lightly varnished so as not to kill any sustain that there is; there have also been many many experiments with different shaped back and side panels to eliminate dead spots and areas where sound can be 'trapped'.

I would refer Mr. Acworth to the experiments by Leo Fender and Les Paul, who independently found that a guitar string had more sustain when used on a solid body. Hence, the development of the solid bodied electric guitar. The majority of these are made of a hard wood and the best have steel or brass inserts under the bridge to increase sustain. The feedback Mr. Acworth mentions is no more than the effect of taking an electric guitar close to its associated speaker, when feedback or 'howl round' becomes obvious.

I have departed from Mr. Acworth's plasma containment idea to discuss his other concepts. I defer to his knowledge of music strings, but I am sure that he will agree with me that a string is only as good as the instrument it is fitted to. I do not wish to appear flippant, but knowledge of the acoustic properties of catgut and brass does not explain Beethoven's fifth symphony. Likewise knowledge of musical string construction does not add to the theory of particle physics..."

Once again thank you for for sending such a well-supported explanation of your idea to support a speaking length of ionising gas plasma within a composite music string. It is with regret that I have to send what I know will be a disappointing reply but as previously stated our knowledge of music string behaviour is limited. On the other hand the basics of particle physics is fully understood but not as a combined concept within a composite wound music string. Yours sincerely...

So; if it's all a bunch of nonsense (disregarding the fact that they have completely misunderstood the entire concept and it is obvious that nobody has actually read the thing through properly), he decides to request carte blanche to publish.They reply:-

This is an extremely stressful period and, probably due to just that fact (and here is where the special effects would become necessary), Steve experiences what is commonly described as a "Walk-in". This is somewhere between a complete hallucination and a ghostly haunting. The event is described here. In brief, he is visited by the apparition of Leonardo Da Vinci, who hangs around, invisible to everybody else of course but who gives him a lesson in painting (visualisation technique) to help with the fire-hoses in the painting he is currently working on - and again quotes the burning statement, in précis:-

"You will be the man who makes toys for the children who ride in spaceships".

Rather like the guy in "Close Encounters", who fixates on the mountain, this event reinforces his life-long obsession with all things Leonardo-esque and he launches into copy painting the Mona Lisa and the Virgin with St. Ann - a task made difficult by his partial colour-blindness and complete lack of formal painting discipline (never having been to Art College).

If you have explored this CDROM, you'll know that the author is an intensely practical and fairly logical person. That "walk-in" event seemed extremely real and its effect was nothing if not humbling. I have no answers to it except that it raised in my mind the question of the direction of time itself.

(Note:- Somewhat bizarrely, I'd recorded this track back in 1987 (written in 1969) on a crude 4-track tape machine (set in a page here). Titled "My Friend Leonardo", it contains references to carbon fibre and gravity. Inspired by a sci-fi story about someone who had a theory that his "Virgin of The Rocks" painting was done on the Moon, because of the strange and ethereal lighting.)

I have done all that I can. The theory now needs practical testing.