Hi Mark! Most of Moe Bandy's earlier recordings, the ones produced by Ray Baker, feature lots of loud and really great steel playing.
There are quite a lot of country and bluegrass acts in Sweden, some really good ones, but few of them are drawing big crowds – playing country over here is a labor of love in most cases. What we have in abundance is "dance bands", who often play country covers and write country-ish tunes (their style is often called "country with a German beat"). Most of them use pedal steel on their records, some on stage as well. But not many people know what a pedal steel is. A wild guess would be that there are significantly fewer than 500 steel players over here, and sadly only a handful making a good living out of it.
Here's Berra Karlsson on steel with Cina Samuelsson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvtMPSxbixY
Fiddler Thomas Haglund's band, Olle Westerlund on steel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yox07sQtdaM
Mats Rådberg – our only country star with real commercial success. Mats Rosén on steel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpoGeYhkijA
Janne LIndgren (1944-2013) played steel on many thousands of Swedish sessions, an old clip from 1975:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AiGJB-Mt4g