Maybach’s Little Wing Is The Perfect Guitar To Write A Song On

This guitar mixes the comfort of a parlor guitar with the output of a vintage electric guitar.

Rounding out the 2023 guitar review season both here and for Ultimate-Guitar, we have the Maybach Little Wing. This perfectly comfortably, quirky guitar comes to us from Germany, and is my first time with a Maybach guitar. Maybach has long been one of the companies I’ve most wanted to investigate, especially after how much I was wowed by the Stanford Crossroad 30 thinline. Stanford serves as a sort of more affordable little sibling to Maybach in the i-music network of brands.

Lo and behold, I finally got my hands on a Maybach and couldn’t be more thrilled with the Little Wing.

At first glance the Little Wing greatly resembles a parlor guitar of sorts, with its classical-style headstock, lack of cutouts around the neck, and shrunken body. But a lot of these quirky features work to the advantage of the guitar, as it is quite frankly one of the most comfortable playing experiences I’ve had.

The Little Wing features a long tenon Mahogany neck and Rosewood fretboard that join a sandwich body of Okoume sides and back with a Maple top. A nitrocellulose finish gives it a real vintage, classic feel. It’s a semi-hollow construction, with a center block to reduce feedback, but large areas hollowed around it to increase acoustic resonance and reduce weight.

Little Wing’s can come in lots of different configurations, some with a cutout for higher fret access, or with different pickup configurations, though mine is a dual P90 (my favorite) model. I was surprised at how easy it was to access the higher frets despite the lack of a cutouts on either horn. But in reality the small body and horns of the guitar make it not as much of an issue as it would be on a large scale instrument.

Furthermore, this neck is butter smooth, and is built almost like a classical guitar neck, getting wider across the fretboard as you move down the neck, but having a thicker fit into your palm. You get the best of both worlds, as cowboy chords and arpeggios on open strings are a breeze, without the Little Wing ever feeling like a toy.

How Does It Sound?

I took the Little Wing and ran it through my stereo amp sim rig (UA Dream and Ruby) with a smattering of my favorite pedals. You’ll find EHX Memory Man Deluxe Nano sounds, Shotmaker Heroine Deluxe sounds, and Spirit In The Sky Fuzz/Tremolo as well.

The P90s sound absolutely fantastic to me and it really underscores just how much fun this guitar is to play. Maybach’s Little Wing may not always be the most technical or visually impressive guitar on my rack, but I can already tell it’s going to be the one I pick up most often. The sound is smooth and buttery, like an old Gibson guitar that none of us can afford. And the lightweight body fits comfortably and is pretty freaking inviting. The upper fret access may have thrown me for a loop at first, but it really wasn’t that difficult and I was having no trouble noodling away over the top of chords.

It reminds me of the Harmony Juno I reviewed years ago, which was also a smaller body guitar that was just perfect for songwriting. Sitting around the house, or at your desk to record, this Little Wing guitar is just a perfect tool for piecing together a song or melody.

And that’s really the best toast I can give to this wonderful little guitar. I have no doubt it’s also great on stage and live, but it just feels like the kind of guitar you’re gonna play everyday after work. It’s not a Les Paul Junior for me to loudly bash around with on stage, and it’s not a delicate boutique guitar for layering verb-drenched lines on indie rock tracks. But that’s not a knock at all, as the guitars I write songs on get played a lot more than the fancy, shiny guitars that may be more impressive to my Instagram followers.

The Maybach Little Wing is a fantastic instrument, and I think you’ll be seeing a lot more of it in 2024!