Cheers guys, in this case a pedal steel is for life not just christmas, don't think I'll ever need to buy another
Aye Danny, I'm saving the lightshow version for Youtube. I suppose there is an element of soft porn in it, I certainly enjoy looking at beautifully made instruments of all kinds, though I must admit my current obsession are Pedal Steels
Hi Ken, nice to hear from you. Yeah Dallas last year was a real eye opener for me in many ways, kind of set the path I am now taking with playing steel. I agree it looks even better in the flesh so to speak

I can't remember exactly what the impedence was specified at, I put an ohm meter over it this morning and it's reading 21.5k which is the dc impedence rather than the ac impedence but gives a rough idea of where it is. On Bobs website he specifies the impedence at 17.5k to 18.5k but that is for a 10 pole pickup, being a 12 pole pickup the impedence is always going to be a bit higher.
I'm thinking about sticking a little high-z buffer preamp between the pickup and the jack, I have done this with other 6 string guitars and it improves the overall tone. I believe this is what a Little Izzy and similar boxes do though I haven't taken one to bits yet.
Janice is doing fine, though we're getting to that time of year when her hands get really cold
@Robert, I'm thinking about publishing a new online magazine titled Readers Steels. We could easily have that Rickenbacker of yours as a centre spread
Thanks Ron and Roy, it would be good to look at others steels here, I might start a thread - show us your steels, bet there are some beauties out there.