Went and had a look - and brought it home. The action is very light, barely need to touch the strings to get a nice clear tone, much better than my old brute. No buzzing either, seems to be well set up and stays in tune! I played around for about two hours tonight and my fingers are just fine.

I also picked up a Pocket Pod (on sale for less than half price) when getting a couple of cords at the local guitar shop. Total expenditure for the "low mileage" Hodad with Bigsby tremolo, very nice hard case, guitar strap, two cords, and the Pocket Pod for a total of about $330 US. And just to prove a point, hooked up directly to my Traynor, cranked it up and blasted out some BTO - sounded great to me! The Hodad does more than just surfer sounds! With the pod inline and the variety of sounds that the Hodad can do I had a lot of fun tonight!

Now to the task of actually learning to play well so I can quit my day job.

Thank you very much to everyone, I now have what I think is a pretty good combo to learn with.