Josh Maxey: Musician, Guitar Heads School, Maxey Archtops

Maxey Archtops Night Owl & Lark

Our focus at Maxey Archtops is providing guitar players with an instrument that encompass the tones of past favorites and inspires each musician to approach their own playing and sound in a new way.

We offer hand carved instruments that are individually crafted to be the best guitars that the materials can combine to make. The personal touch of hand carving adds layers of subtle character to the voice of the instrument. You’ll find Maxey Archtops guitars to be amongst the most responsive, expressive and dynamic guitars available.

Our small body archtops combine the elegance, overtones, sustain and character of the jazz box lineage in a shape as comfortable as any solid body guitar. Acoustically, Maxey Archtops guitars provide increased volume and dynamic range. The notes naturally bloom. Plugged in, those attributes are magnified. Complex modern chordal harmonies are balanced, sweet, and swirl around with overtones as the notes interact in the room when amplified. Single notes are responsive to the attack and bloom as you hold onto them.

When adding a bit of volume and drive, our guitars roar to life. The sustain becomes harmonic feedback bloom, which is easily controlled and sings joyously with expression. Our small body offerings are a conscious effort to move the benefits of a compact archtop into the hands of today’s musicians. We partner with our artisan builders to design guitars that inspire our players to be very best musicians that they can be.

– Josh Maxey, January 2024 
Josh Maxey is a lifelong musician, guitar teacher and archtop enthusiast based in Denver, CO. His music has been played around the world on jazz radio and you’ll find multiple albums under his name. Maxey Archtops headquarters is located in California. Josh keeps a busy teaching schedule online with his Guitar Heads School and and also runs Phish Guitar Heads, a Facebook music study community.

The Maxey Archtops Night Owl is a hand carved, small body, double cutaway guitar. Night Owl is available in spruce top with maple back and sides or curly maple top, back and sides. Available colors are Night Red or Sunburst. Electronics are gold & black. Every Night Owl features all solid wood selection, parallel bracing, kerfing, mahogany or maple binding, nitro finish, ebony fingerboard, tailpiece and floating bone saddle bridge. It’s 24 fret neck with 25.5” scale is designed to provide a clarity and pop to the notes while positioning the pickups exactly where we want for a balanced mix of high, low and mid while providing a truly sweet and expressive tone. Each Night Owl is equipped with Seymour Duncan ’59 humbuckers in series, parallel and split functions. The wooden volume/tone and switches will be positioned by the bridge and f-hole for easy control of a wide range of tones.

Hand carved small body archtops are known for their blooming notes. They are rich in acoustic quality, harmonics and responsive to the touch. With hand made instruments, the woods are carefully crafted individually to bring the most out of the particular materials. We are happy to offer a new luthier made option at an affordable price to small body archtop enthusiasts.

Night Owl guitars are hand crafted by our master luthier shop overseas. Our makers are artisan builders. They are responsible for the woodwork, gluing and Nitro finish of the Night Owl. The design, electronics assembly, fretwork, hardware and setup is done at the Maxey Archtops Warehouse in California, USA.

Introducing the Lark, the first instrument in the Maxey Archtops Supreme Series. The Lark is fully hollow and hand crafted by our Luthiers Guild shop. It is a 13” small body archtop with 24 frets and 25.5” scale length. The sound board is hand carved and braced, available in burst and natural AAA Flame Maple with Nitro Finish. The hand carved back and bent sides are AAA Mahogany with a gorgeous and comfortable Matte Finish. It is a jazz box, a rock box and likewise at home in blues & country. The Lark is designed to range tonally from the soothing and crisp expression of complex modern harmonies to being equally adept at blowing the doors and roof off of whatever room you need it to.

The Lark features the signature MA headstock, logo and mother of pearl fretboard inlays. The neck is 5 piece matte finish Mahogany matching the back and sides. The pickup rings, tailpiece, volume and tone knobs are matching hand crafted ebony. The bridge is a stylish Gotoh tune o matic ensuring intonation atop the matching ebony base. Loaded with SD59’s in series, parallel, and split functions, the Lark offers a wide range of tonal possibilities to combine and explore. The f holes are triple bound. The Lark features mahogany binding around the body, fretboard and headstock.

The MA-S shop is staffed by a small group of expert luthiers bringing an artisan touch to every hand crafted instrument. From the design, to carve, finish and electronics, the Supreme Series offers players a luthier grade instrument that both inspires by sight and touch as well as playability, tone and responsiveness.