After five years of development, Bananana Effects finally released a synth pedal that treats real-time pitch tracking not as a gimmick but as the foundation of a full polyphonic synthesizer—one compact enough to sit on your pedalboard without sacrificing the depth you'd expect from a desktop instrument.
The Quimera packs two independent oscillators with three distinct synthesis engines: basic waveforms for Oscillator A and B, 30 morphing wavetables with 64-frame morphing for deeper sound design, and a sample engine that records up to two minutes forty seconds of audio and intelligently tracks the fundamental and harmonics of your input. You get four filter types including lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and formant filters with all vowel positions, shaped by three ADSRs, two LFOs, and an envelope follower that can modulate virtually any parameter. The signal path rounds out with distortion, modulation, delay, and reverb effects, plus MIDI control over all parameters and the ability to output MIDI notes directly from your playing. The pedal measures 145 by 121 by 55 millimeters and weighs 490 grams, with mono in and mono out via quarter-inch connectors, expression pedal input, three footswitches for sound selection, and both USB and five-pin DIN MIDI connectivity.
What sets the Quimera apart is its obsessive focus on low latency—the tracking engine samples every five milliseconds, and the TOONLEAD preset achieves a measured 12.5 milliseconds of total latency, which Bananana Effects prioritized over stereo processing to keep response time tight enough for real-time playing. The pedal stores 128 presets and includes a Sound Scope visual display for monitoring your signal in real time. Since its March 2026 release, the Quimera has resonated with guitarists and experimental musicians looking for a synth that actually responds to their playing rather than fighting against it, though some users note that latency remains perceptible in certain complex patches depending on your sound design choices.
