I first noticed The Tower Spring Reverb at BAF 2024 and assumed it was a one-off art piece — the kind of thing that gets photographed next to a synthesizer and never actually ships. Then Days Of Yore went quiet for a year, and I forgot about it. Now the Montreal-based company co-founded by Kassia Lemieux and Daniel Rouleau has officially launched, and The Tower is very much a real product you can buy. So are four others.
That’s the thing about this launch. Most boutique hardware companies debut with one pedal and a dream. Days Of Yore is arriving with a full lineup — five products, five very different price points, and a design language that’s unmistakably theirs.
Five Tools, One Clear Point of View
The range runs from the Lost Contact ($199 USD), an extreme-gain distortion pedal that the company describes as going from “focused, tight distortion to full signal annihilation,” up to The Tower Spring Reverb ($3,599 USD), which stands 41 inches (104 cm) tall and functions as both a spring reverb unit and an undeniable room statement.
In between: the Pulse Mirage ($399 USD), a fuzz pedal with a dual-adjustable oscillator section that opens up into genuinely unpredictable sonic territory; the Passive Matrix Mixer ($999 USD), a five-in/five-out unit that doubles as a feedback routing engine; and the Echoic Drift ($1,199 USD), a compact spring reverb housed in black walnut with top-panel controls. Every unit is handcrafted, backed by a five-year limited warranty — a serious commitment for a young company.
The Passive Matrix Mixer already has a Tape Op review behind it (Issue #169), where the reviewer spent a session running feedback loops through stompboxes and came away describing results as “indescribable.” Needless to say, that’s the kind of write-up you can’t manufacture.
The Tower Is the One
I can’t help thinking that without The Tower, this is an interesting boutique hardware company. With The Tower, it’s something else entirely.A metre-tall spring reverb with three springs, an audio insert, remote footswitch operation, and gold hardware on a walnut-and-steel enclosure — this isn’t competing with the Strymon Flint or a software convolution reverb. It’s in the category of gear that changes the acoustics of a room just by sitting in the corner. If this existed when I was tracking guitars through a borrowed Fender reverb tank balanced on a chair, I’d have known immediately that I was doing it wrong.
FYI: it ships via Perfect Circuit in Burbank, CA — their global distribution partner — which means international availability is already sorted at launch.
A Word on the Aesthetic
All I can tell you is that the walnut enclosures, the industrial hardware, and the open-spring design aren’t an afterthought. These are objects people will photograph before they plug them in. Studios are content now, whether their owners like it or not, and Days Of Yore seems to understand that the visual argument is part of the sonic argument. The gear has to hold up both ways.
That’s a hard brief to pull off at the $199 price point of the Lost Contact and the $3,599 price point of The Tower simultaneously. Whether the build quality matches the ambition is something we’ll find out when review units ship.
Pricing and Availability
The full Days Of Yore launch lineup is available now through their dealer network. Perfect Circuit handles global distribution and shipping.
- Lost Contact (extreme-gain distortion): $199 USD — Product Page | Video
- Pulse Mirage (fuzz with dual oscillator): $399 USD — Product Page | Video
- Passive Matrix Mixer (5-in/5-out feedback engine): $999 USD — Product Page | Video
- Echoic Drift (compact spring reverb, black walnut): $1,199 USD — Product Page | Video
- The Tower Spring Reverb (41″/104 cm, three-spring): $3,599 USD — Product Page | Video
Full dealer list: daysofyoreaudio.com/dealers
For more context on where hardware character sits in the current signal chain conversation, our IK Multimedia TONEX Pedal coverage is still worth a read.
How about you — does a metre-tall spring reverb belong in your studio, or is The Tower strictly a “visit it at a dealer” situation?
