It was an entry level instrument. Try it before money changes hands. They were made over many years and specs no doubt vary through the times. I have since 1990 owned a 1961 sample. It is definitively laminated - also the top - but the top is thin so it's a loud and projecting instrument, albeit without much refinement in tone quality. The neck is of the baseball bat type and fairly narrow. The bindings and glued seams are all intact, and the guitar is structurally healthy, which has made me wonder if Gretsch outsourced the making of these guitars to other makers (Kay? Harmony?) because Gretsch guitars from that era has tended to fall apart from celluloid rot and poor quality glue.
I've had a few old Gertsch archtops over the years, including a neat old '54 Synchro acoustic - similar to that New Yorker, but with fancier trim. As mentioned above, laminated spruce top, laminated maple back/rims. Mine had a very wide, deep neck and had been rebuilt (binding replaced, neck reset, board refretted, broken tailpiece replaced, etceteras). It was quite loud acoustically - a perfect candidate for use as an acoustic archtop, or with an added floating pickup or set-in Dearmond Dynasonic or two. A step above a Harmony or Kay, IME.
Sometimes the naming got screwy, but 50s Gretsch models tended to compete with Gibson/Epiphone; I think it went like this:
Super 400/Emperor/Eldorado
L5CT/Deluxe/Fleetwood
L7/Triumph/Constellation, etc.
You can look at old catalogues; the price points were quite similar. For many years I had a late 50s Fleetwood, which was an extremely nice guitar, but somewhat plainer with somewhat lesser sound quality compared to an L5CT.
The New Yorker was the absolute bottom of the line, a bad copy of an L-48. It would probably sound OK amplified. IMHO the better Harmonys were better guitars. Hard pass at a New Yorker at $1,000.
The older synchros went by model number. Many (if not all) did not have truss rods.
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Guitar Amps built into case?
Yesterday, 05:03 PM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos