About Us

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.