Well, the beauty of nature, the way it connects with me.

Like, I'm not a real deep religious person, but I know there is a hereafter.

And, like I tell most people, my cathedral is in the mountains.

My recovery, I think I owe a lot of it to my love of nature and being out in the outdoors.

And you can't dwell on it.

You can't live your life scared to death.

I mean, that you're going to have another one, because more likely, you will.

I've had five, two surgeries and five heart attacks, and, but it's it's something you can't be afraid of because, if there's nothing worse than living in fear and, you got to just go on with what you're given.

Take the time you got.

My granddaughter is my biggest fan.

She goes to the Wichita mountains with me.

Rock climbs.

I just play for me.

I'm no Edgar Cruz.

Oh, my name is Caroll Cox.

I've been in the guitar making since, oh, I guess 1998, since my last bypass surgery.

And, I had played guitar for, well, now for five, for 55 years now.

And at that time, I had always wanted to build a guitar.

I had no idea what was all entailed and building of a guitar, but my heart surgery just decided, I better do what I want to do.

While I can.

From the following Christmas I bought some wood, built a dulcimer, enjoyed that, and had wood left over.

So I built a guitar.

I've just always worked with wood.

I used to build custom rifle stocks just as a hobby.

And, I'd been in woodwork, I guess, since I was, 12, 13 years old.

And, just learned a lot about the different woods and the grain patterns.

And, you go with what's there, you don't try to alter it, you just follow what the grain will give you.

And we're going to put a little curve in this neck.

Today we, edged it, rounded off the neck, got it roughed in, ready for the final fitting.

But before we do this, I need to get the amplification system inside and the back on, so it'll be a little more stable.

Most guitar makers use mahogany comes as a stable wood, but I like the necks of cherry because it's, it's easy to work, and it's.

It's a good looking piece of material.

Of course, I've learned a lot through trial and error mistakes and, but it's just something that I enjoy doing, and, I just hope everybody that has them enjoys them as much as I do building them.

To see someone play an instrument that I've built and, to hear the kind of music that, can come out of it.

I'm not a good guitar player.

I just play for my own pleasure.

But, my friend George is a very good guitar player.

He plays real nice music, and it kind of gives you a real sense of pride to be able to say, well, I built that instrument.

I bought this one.

And, when I bought it, the neck was a little thicker than I like.

And so I brought it back, and Carol worked the neck down to where it's perfect.

But.

You can't really do anything from a guitar, from a store to you.

What you see is what you get.

Pretty much, unless you take it to a luthier and say, I want this done.

And, oh, it's great.

You don't usually get that kind of unless you're personally friends with a luthier.

Which I am now.

So.

George found out about me making guitars through my wife's business.

A friend of mine from work was, looking at the, concrete statues out front, looking at some kind of pottery.

And he came around the corner and he just wandered around the side.

And here was a guitar.

maker.

And when he went back to work, when I told George about it.

And so he told me about it, I came by and, I fell in love with the the guitar.

It's so easy to play because it's got the, the rounded, corners on it.

You can set it on your leg here and play for, for hours because it, it doesn't dig in like some of the sharper corners do.

And it's.

They sound good.

They've got this.

He puts a sound hold up here where you can get the sound.

Right up to you.

I stumbled on the the the side sound holes.

Just, kind of as an experiment to see if the player could get more of what the guitar's putting out as the projection out in front.

And it's so far it's worked out good.

It.

I've started putting three sound holes or two large ones.

Most of the people that play them says it really projects up as well as out.

Okay.

We're going to try to attach the pickup system.

This is the, K and K sound system.

The pickup, each little disc has to be epoxy or super glued to the bridge plate.

And one drop covers a square inch.

So these are about, all about a third of that.

So I've got to be careful how much glue I get on it.

We attach the two center pickups, touching the center rib.

Then we'll get the outside pickups evenly spaced to pick up the remainder of the strings.

Put on this little wood support to keep the strings from just flopping and hanging.

Then we marked the hole for the plug, drilled it, and install the plug.

Turned out pretty good.

And there's not any two guitars that's identical.

They're all totally individual, totally different.

Because you can build 15 guitars out of a solid chunk of wood, and they will all be different in sound because of the growth rings, the growth patterns of the wood.

And, you might get a brace just a little bit thinner on one guitar than you do another, or the location might be just a little different.

And that has to do with the sound.

This is the very first guitar I ever made when I didn't know nearly as much as I know now.

And the very next one I built, the guy, had already had this idea of the name for strumming bird.

He had an old, Gibson Hummingbird, and he said, boy, this is better than my hummingbird.

This is a, like a strumming bird.

And it just kind of stuck.

There's 98 feathers in this guitar and incorporated in this decoration here.

I've got my signature.

Every guitar I make, I sign it like this.

Cox with the diamond shape.

I want to clean up a lot of this stuff inside while I can get inside.

And then, put the back on.

I get all the back and the top on.

Then I do my rounding over of the edges, which gives the guitar the shape it has you know, the final rounded shape.

It has then rounded edges I just love them.

I just stumbled on that.

The trade off is between like for like sound and what’s pleasing to the eye.

Like this guitar has a cherry neck and it's a light colored cherry.

And it goes with the light colored spruce and which will contrast with the red of the paddock when I do the artwork.

Last to keep from getting that dirty, getting the top dirty, soiled and then having to sand it again and sanding out some of your artwork.

So I do that last just before I put the the finish on it.

I studied the wood, before I put it together.

I'll see what's there.

If there's, an image of a bear, an eagle, if I can visualize it in in the wood.

I'll go with that.

I have been in art since I've been big enough to hold the pencil.

Well, I just like expressing myself through artwork.

It's very, very pleasing, very rewarding.

If this gets to be a job, I'm out of it.

I do it because I love to do it.