thanks for the bar referrals.
and wow 48 spokes, thats a lot of spokes, but from my fully loaded touring days, a good well built wheel will generally go for ages without any spoke problems so if you are a heavy fellow, this must be great. Its funny how the extremes are, my wife and I just finished a 6 day biking event where the vast majority of people had high end racing road bikes, so we saw lots of very minimal spoked wheels. (my wife on a light hybrid and me on a cyclocross....so many of those bikes more pricely than my old car)