“We’ve assembled a team of top talent to turn ideas into world-class instruments”: Former Gamechanger Audio employees have launched a new firm – and their first pedal is inspired by the human voice

Two former Gamechanger Audio employees have launched a new brand, Mentha Works – and their debut stompbox is a quirky reverb/delay inspired by the human voice.

Their former employer has more than lived up to its name with a string of innovative designs over the years, including the Bigsby pedal and the world’s first drivable synth pedal. So it’s no surprise that the Monk Echo is steeped in similar levels of imagination.

Inspired by “Baltic choirs and mystical spaces”, the Monk Echo is said to speak in vowels, letting you “morph entire soundscapes with a single, effortless gesture.”

Reverb and delay effects are morphed by formant filters, which are tuned to the resonant frequencies of the human voice. Add in responsive modulation, granular pitch-shifting, distortion, and degradation effects, and you have a powerhouse for luscious soundscaping.

It has a host of controls to play around with. There's a Wet/Dry dial, a control for the pre-delay reverb, while Delay Time and Reverb Feedback complete its top row.

Beneath them, there's a knob for fiddling with the character of its Monk Voice, a Vowel Selector, and the power to tweak its modulation fluctuation and distortion/degradation levels. It can also be tap tempo operated, while the Marco Control knob allows its suite of controls to be reshaped with a single turn of the dial.

Excitingly, too, an expression pedal can do all the heavy lifting, allowing electric guitar players to immerse themselves in its otherworldliness hands-free.

The pedal is designed to sing along with a player's performance, reacting to every pick stroke, while every parameter reacts in real time on an 8x8 dot display, which looks wonderfully Sci-Fi.

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Founded by musicians and sound designers Toms Lazdovskis and Matiss Tazans, Mentha Works also has talent from Neural DSP, Darkglass, and Marshall in its ranks. And they’ve come out flying here, with shoegazers, prog musicians, and curious tone-chasers alike all likely to be at the front of the queue for this.

“After helping build and shape one of the most inventive brands in the industry, we are now dedicated to designing our own line of expressive, attention-to-design instruments for pedalboard and desktop that celebrate both classic values and a fresh approach,” says Mentha Works.

“We have assembled a team of some of the top talent from across Europe, with experience at companies such as Neural DSP, Darkglass, and Marshall to turn ideas into world-class instruments.”

Its limited-time launch price of $380/€380 doesn't make it the most accessible reverb or delay pedal on the market, but it's certainly unique, and it bodes well for what the firm has in store for us next.

That pre-order price is limited to the first 500 units, and it's due to ship in February 2026.

See Mentha Works for more.