How I Met Guitar Designer Doc Kauffman, Leo Fender's Original Partner

One evening back in the day, 1970, I was traveling home from work at North Island Naval Station in San Diego, when I decided to stop by a little junk/hardware store near Imperial Beach. As I browsed around I noticed a peg-board on the back wall of the shop, which held a few guitars and a couple of old horns. Being a guitar player, I headed straight for it. One guitar in particular caught my eye; it was a slightly worn old Fender Stratocaster. It had an off-white body with a blonde ash neck. The neck was well played and the finish was a little dingy, but I knew right then that I had to have that guitar.

The tag on the guitar said $125.00. I had just cashed my paycheck and had a hundred dollar bill in my pocket. I offered the clerk my Benjamin for the Strat and he did not hesitate to make the trade. Man, was I excited. I walked out of the hardware store with my first American made electric guitar. It was the same model as I had seen Jimi Hendrix play. Wow. Big expectations.

I brought it home and plugged it into my amp. Sadly, it made no sound at all. Being a Navy electronics technician by training, I opened the pick guard and found a rat's nest of wires and corrosion. Ugly. I had no idea how to rewire the pickups and tone pots. I put the guitar away, intending to get back to it sometime later.

As chance would have it, a few weeks later my girlfriend and I were at a club up in Huntington Beach where I struck up a conversation with the guitar player in the band. I told him about this great old Stratocaster that I found and how I was bummed out finding the wiring mess inside. He said he knew someone who might help me out and wrote down a man's name and number and suggested I call and tell him my story.

I called the guy the next day and related my problems with the guitar. To my surprise, he invited me to come over to his house where he would try and help me. The next day I traveled to Fullerton, California, arriving in a very a nice neighborhood with manicured gardens and remembered thinking that I might be lost. But the address checked out, so I knocked on the door. An older gentleman answered and immediately welcomed me in. He introduced me to his wife and exchanged a few pleasantries, then asked me to follow him to the basement and workshop.

Guitar nirvana! Guitars hanging up all over the place, amps and lap slide guitars, all kinds of electronics gadgets lying about. Whoa!

He briefly glanced at my hardware store purchase before going over to some books he had on one of his workbenches. He thumbed through it and found the exact factory-wiring diagram for my guitar. I was much impressed, not only by the awesome ambiance of his workspace, cool guitar stuff all over the place, but also by the great reference materials he had lying around. I copied the wiring diagram and asked him how he got into the guitar business.

His name was "Doc" Kauffman, Clayton O. Kauffman, which didn't mean anything to me at the time. He told me about being in the guitar ampflier business in the 1940's with a guy whose name I did recognize. Doc began making guitars, pickups, and amplifiers, with his first business partner, Leo Fender. They parted company and Doc went on to design other amps and lap style guitars that had moderate success.

How amazing for a guy like that to take the time to help me out with my little guitar woes. He showed me one of the new amps he was designing and some other really cool stuff that he was working on currently.

Later on I found out that Doc Kauffman was also a fine guitar player and still gigged around the area in the '70's.

I rewired the old Strat and she sang like a "Voodoo Child." There is nothing like a 1959 Fender Stratocaster. It sounds and plays like pure honey.

In retrospect, I realize that I was privileged to meet one of the founding fathers of the modern electric guitar. Doc, now almost lost in obscurity, overshadowed by Leo Fender, deserves to been remembered. The electric guitar world owes a lot to Doc Kauffman and his contribution to the design of the first electric guitar amplifiers. It's also worth noting that the Rickenbacker Vibrola, designed by Doc Kauffman and looking pretty much like a modern tremolo arm, was patented in 1929. He also did extensive research on floating bridges for string instruments, and many other guitar and ampflier enhancements.

I recently went the Experience Music Project in Seattle Washington, and was thrilled to see a section devoted to Doc Kauffman in the Evolution Of The Electric Guitar exhibit.

In remembrance of Clayton O. (Doc) Kauffman