I LOVE Cedar.
I'm primarily a classical guitarist and the two main woods used are spruce and cedar. Well spruce is nice and loudl bright etc. but Cedar is so sweet, deep and warm. It's beautiful, and somehow it allows the player to express a bit more emotion with the subtleties of the tone.
And so while I like Koa and other uke woods, I love cedar on my concert Kala.
Unfortunately out of the 16 ukes I have that is my only cedar, but I do have a 1/4 size strunal classical guitar and my wonderful Antonio Loriente Clarita Classical Guitar. You can See it in my YouTube videos.
Now I use all my ukes, and but when it comes to classical guitar, cedar is simply the best wood for me. Having said that, I don't have a tenor yet, so use my beautiful Koa Mya Moe which has its own wonderful qualities.
As for dings, I find that with a bit of care it's not that big an issue. In fact dings from cedar are like small dimples, instead of scratches and holes. The wood is soft enough that if careless, it will depress into a dimple if hit.
But I treat all my instruments like a jeweler handling diamonds, with great care and attention. So that's not really a problem. And the one or two dings on my 5 year old guitar add just the right ammount of character.
For the ukes, as I do with other glossy finished, I make a mask of the top half of the sound board on paper then use an iPad screen protector to make a transparent pick guard for the uke. It's almost invisible if done correctly but only on gloss finishes.
You can see my thread about how I made the guard for my cedar top
here
And if you look at my profile albums you can see the instruments I mentioned, with the guard applied to the concert cedar, kala spruce top and Big Island mango tenor.