About

Tim Schroeder is the owner of Schroeder Guitar Repair & Custom Building in Chicago, IL. 

Tim opened his guitar repair, custom building, and restoration shop in the Chicagoland area in the summer of 1991 and has since gone on to build custom archtop guitars, tube amplifiers, and more.

His training began at The Apprentice Shop (Gibson Factory Warrantee Facility) in Spring Hill, Tennessee. This was soon followed with working under master repairman, Gary Brawer, in San Francisco, California. The Brawer Shop serviced clientel such as The Grateful Dead, Joe Satriani, Albert Collins, as well as many of the Windham Hill artists.

The desire to further perfect his building skills next brought Tim to the studio of master luthier Robert Benedetto where he studied the nuances of archtop guitar building. Tim then headed back to the Chicagoland area where he began building archtops as well as doing guitar repairs for his more upscale clients at his shop, Schroeder Guitar Repair. After 12 years Tim moved locations to the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, an historic artist's oasis since 1898, where he continued to build, repair, and restore instruments, and earned a reputation for his fine fret work on guitars.  He eventually settled to his current location in the West Loop of Chicago.

Out of the necessity to have an amplifier which could be sonically transparent enough to do justice to the beautiful archtops he was devoting 500 hours to  build, Tim delved into the world of custom building tube amplifiers.  These hand built, hand wired, custom amplifiers feature several unique preamp designs and can be tailor made to meet a players specifications.  Currently Schroeder Guitar Repair & Custom Building is producing a line of high headroom amplifiers called the Schroeder DB7, built specifically for the jazz, pop, rock, and experimental style of guitarist/composer Nels Cline. 

Tim has also designed and built a high headroom distortion pedal called the Blister Agent.  This hand wired pedal was the result of over a decade of tweaking and trying different ideas.  It features a sag filter, giving the pedal an organic feel and the ability to accentuate swirly-style effects, and a notch filter to accentuate different frequencies.  The Blister Agent has been used on guitars and even drums in recording studios.  The first run of 20 were sold to a select group of musicians including the members of Wilco, Andrew Bird, Nels Cline, and others.  A new run is soon to be in the works.

Schroeder Guitar Repair & Custom Building strives above all, for quality of their product and quality of their work.  Tim Schroeder will only develop and implement ideas that he believes in and that do not simply repeat another's design or idea, but are unique unto themselves.  This model has brought Tim and his shop a renown reputation for quality.