Zeppelin Design Labs
About us
Connect with your music: build your own gear.
Zeppelin Design Labs is the brainchild of electrical engineer and product designer Brach Siemens. After working for years designing guitar amplifiers and effects pedals for others, Brach aspired to design products that would offer customers the gratifying experience of building the gear they use in creating their own music. So in 2014, Zeppelin Design Labs was started as an outlet to provide a wide-ranging product line of do-it-yourself kits, while still offering freelance audio electronic design services.
As someone who is deeply passionate about designing and building audio gear, Brach has a particular enthusiasm for the audio DIY community. His design ethos has been formed around his passion for making gear that is used in the creation of music and art. “There is something magical about the process of creation…and there is something especially fulfilling about making the gear we use to express our creativity. We develop a completely different relationship with our art when we’ve had a hand in creating the tools used in the process.”
The goal of Zeppelin Design Labs is to give our customers the opportunity to build their own gear — giving them the confidence and experience to eventually use their creativity to design their own gear from the ground up.
The shop
From the bench
Design, assembly, and testing happen here in Naperville.
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Cortado assembly
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Potting station
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On the bench
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Team at work
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Brach on the bench
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Soldering
Designer/E.E.
About Brach
Brach Siemens — product designer and electrical engineer.
Brach has always had a deep fascination with how and why things work. He has been tinkering with technology since he was 4 years old when, with overwhelming curiosity, he learned how to pry apart his mechanical and electrical toys with a flat head screwdriver. He has been repairing technical devices since he learned how to put those toys back together again a few years later.
Brach studied both graphic design and electrical engineering at university, developing a well-rounded approach to design, and cultivating a passion for both form and function — how things look, as well as how things work.
He spent several years repairing professional audio and studio gear, which allowed him to gain invaluable experience in seeing firsthand why certain design approaches and manufacturing techniques work better than others. He uses that experience on a daily basis in his work designing audio products.
Being a lifelong musician, Brach is deeply passionate about expressing his creativity through designing audio electronics and musical instruments. He is also passionate about sharing his experience to help others explore their creative side by encouraging them to make the gear they use to create their art.
One of the goals Brach had in starting Zeppelin Design Labs as a kit and DIY company was to give customers the opportunity to build their own gear — hopefully giving them the confidence and experience to use their creativity to eventually design their own gear from the ground up; but at the very least to give customers a much better understanding of how their music gear works.
Brach encourages everyone to read a “making” blog, watch a DIY YouTube video, put together a kit, or even build something from scratch. He wants to inspire and empower others to create something they can use.
Questions or orders?
Reach out from the contact page — we usually reply within one business day.
Contact us