The Bananana?Mandala isn’t just another “fun?toy” glitch box—it’s a tiny, hand?wired manifesto that says the future of chaos lives on a printed?circuit board the size of a postage stamp. Made in the UK by the renegade outfit Bananana Pedals, the Mandala packs eight distinct modes into a single 3?U chassis: Repeat, Reverse, Random, Trigger, Multi?Speed Playback, Pitch?Shift, Square?Wave, and a hidden “Stutter” that pops up when you hold the footswitch past two seconds?.
Two knobs do the heavy lifting. Time governs everything from delay length in Repeat mode to the grain?size of the Random engine, while the Function knob becomes a filter depth, pitch range, or speed multiplier depending on which mode you’re in. The momentary footswitch is a performance weapon: press Down and the repeats cascade down the scale, press Up and they climb—perfect for those “I?just?found?a?new?scale” moments that make a set feel like a live?wire experiment.
What really makes the Mandala sing is its dual?direction CV input, allowing external LFOs or envelope followers to modulate the Function knob in real time, and a USB?powered, 9?V?compatible design that lets you run it off a laptop or a pedalboard battery without ever losing the raw, lo?fi grit that Bananana promises
