The Dual Independent Swirl Combustor (DISCo) facility is a laboratory-scale gas turbine model combustor that is designed to exhibit thermoacoustic instabilities generated by the coupling of the unsteady combustion process with the acoustic properties of the combustion chamber and air/fuel plenums. The present work is aimed at discussing the design, hardware development, and characterization of the facility. Specifically, acoustic analysis performed to design the system and understand the dominant natural instability modes exhibited by it are presented. These are then validated through experiments. Additionally, a methane-air flame is studied through chemiluminescence measurements, and quantities such as time-averaged flame shape, intermittency, and Rayleigh Index are reported. This facility has been developed for combustion control studies. A demonstration of the interfacing of the facility with a secondary controller is also presented.