X-rated Bob wrote:
Are there TWO kinds of archtop? Those made to have pickups and be amplified and those designed to be played as an acoustic instrument?
Oh, more than TWO!
But, first, the simple answer to your initial question is: no, it's probably not a good investment. A good, original L-48 is probably worth R10-12K with original case. A quality restoration job will quite possibly cost more than that, even if you get the guitar for free, and it'll always be a restored guitar. If you want an investment (although it won't be a great one as it's never going to be an investment-grade guitar), then buy a good one, not a rat, and look after it—it'll cost you less and be worth more.
Archtop guitars were originally designed (not only by Orville Gibson, although he popularized the concept) to produce more noise, the idea being that a carved spruce top—like that if a violin—would provide a better resonant base for a large guitar, moving more air, than a ladder-braced flat-top. The idea worked, and reached its zenith with the Gibson L-5 and Super 400 (and various great guitars from other manufacturers...), which are the only really collectible acoustic archtop Gibson's as they're the ones used by the top pros of the period. Consequently, they're the ones that today's acoustic jazzers like to use.
Ordinary working stiffs used less-decorated (but still beautifully-made) acoustics such as the L-7 and L-10, which have some real collectibility and playability, but will accelerate less quickly than the Big Beasts.
Then there were the cheaper guitars that looked like the real thing, but were generally made far less well with (for example) pressed laminate tops rather than carved. Gibson made a bunch of these, which are no better nor worse than those made by the likes of Harmony, but are worth more because they have "Gibson" written on the headstock. These will appreciate, but slowly, because there's a lot of them out there and nobody really wants to play them. Serious acoustic jazzers want an L-7 or better, and there's no other acoustic f-hole acoustic guitar market except for pop videos (where they're rented) and a few hipsters.
Then electricity came into the picture. Some people sat in front of a big mic; some people used contact mics of one form or another (my Dad used an RAF helmet's throat mic in the mid-40s), and some used magnetic mics—attached permanently, semi-permanently or temporarily in ways that may or may not affect the acoustic tone of the guitar.
Gibson's entry into the dedicated electric guitar market was the ES-150 (ES for Electric Spanish—there were also EH or Electric Hawaiian, models). These looked like standard archtop guitars but weren't designed to perform acoustically at all: the top, the table, is just a platform for the pickup, not—in any significant sense—a resonating surface. The ES-xxx models have continued as such for nearly 80 years. And there have been dedicated electric guitarists playing these from Charlie Christian (and before) on.
But not everyone was a dedicated electric guitarist. Some musicians needed the sound reinforcement on stage, but wanted a "proper" acoustic tone when recording (easy when the level engineer could park a cardioid mic beside the guitar and boost it in the live mix). They used removable pickups such as the DeArmond Rhythm King for live work, or pickups that attached to the end of the fingerboard and so didn't interfere with the carved archtop, or even built-in pickups that were as isolated as possible from the vibration of that top (as seen in Gibson's L-5 and Super 400 CES models—where C is for Cutaway and ES is for Electiuc Spanish again, but the core acoustic values are preserved as much as possible...).
Not that the acoustic archtop died. In the 1950s and early 1960s, an f-hole or 'cello guitar was still the default configuration for most affordable steel-string acoustic guitars (unless you were playing cowboy songs). Lennon played one; Keef played one; everybody played one. It was only after the first Folk Music Scare of 1963 that flat-top steel-string guitars became mainstream for anything other than the very cheapest Gallotone-style "guaranteed not to crack" guitar, except in the US.
So that's kinda why an L-48 isn't likely to appreciate fast. It's a student guitar of a type that people don't really play any more (and, unlike other Gibson student guitars such as the Les Paul Jr, it hasn't gained mojo thanks to a bunch of lairy rockers choosing it as a low-fat alternative to premium models). Given a really ratty one for a good price I'd probably convert it to a sort of ES-125, but that's just me. Or maybe I'd put a Big Tone in the bridge and play it electro-acoustic...
The ES-175, on the other hand, is well worth restoring, and even restored will be worth real moolah. Get the restorer to add (and varnish in) a label inside the body, beside the Gibson lable visible through the f-hole, stating the date and nature of the restoration in small but clear handwriting and your conscience should be clear. Really early ES-175's aren't worth as much as they should be, in my view, but they're still worth plenty...
