Ian Schneller built his first musical instrument in 1986: a 30-by-32-inch kick drum for his band Shrimp Boat. The monster appears on the cover of the group’s 1991 collection Volume 1. “It would just barely fit through the doors of all the venues,” Schneller recalls. “But we’d always win over the sound operators. It was kind of a PR thing as much as it was an enormous kick drum.”
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Schneller calls his business Specimen Products, a name he’s been attaching to his work since his undergrad days in Memphis. He originally had his shop in the building where Shrimp Boat rehearsed, and moved three times before arriving in 2003 at his present digs—a spacious Humboldt Park loft at 1240 N. Homan, where he also runs the Chicago School of Guitar Making. Since the late 80s he’s built more than 200 instruments, including pretty straightforward guitars and basses—the ones he made for Tar in the early 90s were unusual principally in that they were hollow aluminum—as well as less easy-to-define things like a solid-body electric ukulele and an odd chimera that combines a Telecaster-style electric-guitar body with a stubby, mandolin-length neck.
Schneller prefers simple, robust construction because he believes it produces superior tones. On my visit to his shop he delivered a convincing diatribe against adjustable truss rods in guitar necks, which have become standard; necks stabilized by fixed supports, he said, are more solid and sound better. And he backed it up with a demo using necks of both stripes.
Like Schneller, Patterson says playing music affects his approach to making gear. Bands like Raise, he says, are “detuning and stuff,” and most cabinets can’t handle the low end. “Everything loses its focus and gets thin. I feel like our cabs deliver a tight response even when you’re playing low, detuned music.”
