I have four of the first wave of Pono ukuleles, and have been very pleased with the quality so far, and when I saw the new cedar topped tenor, I wanted to see if this one was any different from the others. What does cedar have to offer that's any different from what I already have? Can I justify a new axe for the stable? Is this just another pretty face? Will it knock my socks off?

So Mike (MGM) sent me the new Pono cedar top tenor ukulele. What follows is my assessment.

I received it on December 19, 2006. I took it out of the box, looked it over... so far, so good. The build quality is very good, neat and clean inside, outside the box is well done, no blemishes, and the cedar has a nice tight grain. The finish appears to be light. The whole uke is very light, the top is pretty thin, and the tuners are perfect. The woods are all solid -mahogany, cedar and ebony. The tuner buttons are ebony as well. The neck feels very good, it felt a little wider than the mahogany, so I measured, and it is a skosh wider. The frets are properly dressed, comfortable and fast. The looks are self-explanatory by the photos, great ribbon mahogany, interesting rope binding, all seams bound in ebony. It's a looker to my eyes. The flash brings out the red in the cedar; it's whiter, but not stark spruce white.

So on to playtime, this is where I was impressed the most. The playability is excellent; the intonation is spot-on all the way up the neck. The sound description that I first thought of was "tubby". It has a decidedly guitar-like sound. This is not the uke for those that prefer short sustain. Although it does have a nice chop when needed, this one rings. I find this uke to be a great fingerstyle player with plenty of volume and great tone. It sounds strange to talk about "bottom end" on an ukulele, but this one has a good bottom end, and would do well also strung re-entrant. This did get my curiosity up, so I got out the mahogany tenor uke and laid them end to end. The cedar tenor is less than an 1/8" thicker. This one is louder than the mahogany tenor, and has a sweet tone to boot.

I use my ukes amplified and this Pono came optional with a Dean Markley undersaddle passive pickup. These sound okay alone, but sound much better with a pre-amp. I use a small LR Baggs Gigpro. No problem driving the volume, no muddy notes.

So to answer my question in the beginning, does this bring something new to the table? Yep, the sound qualities are different than mahogany, the playability is excellent, and while I still love the all mahogany tenor, this does have a little something extra that would make it a daily player and a great performance uke. Does it knock my socks off? The sound really did. It also knocks my socks off that an ukulele of this kind of quality costs what it does.

For more photos, questions, price and local dealer info see Pono Ukuleles at Ko'olau Ukulele.

UkeTalk says thanks to Neal for this Pono Ukulele review!