I'm not an acoustic guitar guru but the way that I have come to understand this is that the scalloped bracing allow the soundboard to vibrate more freely at lower strumming levels. Giving you more sound and response when you strum lightly to moderately. However, with this you compensate hard strumming volume. You can strum as hard as you want on the guitar, it's not going to fall apart... but the soundboard will reach it's vibration peak sooner than guitars with solid bracing. Think of the volume of the guitar in a graph form... the scalloped guitars graph would start slightly higher than the X axis... rise sharply then start to level off as you increase strumming intensity... The solid brace guitars graph would start at the origin and rise at a 1:1 ratio with strumming intensity...Those mechanical engineering classes are finally starting to do me some good! haha This is the way that I have interpreted this... Like I said, I'm not an acoustic guru.