How does tonewood affect amplified sound?

It's been asked before how installing an undersaddle pickup affects acoustic sound. But that's about all I can find. I'm still wondering how the soundboard wood affects the amplified sound.

If it matters... The uke will be a Mainland tenor, and the pickup, the Mi-Si. I'm new to both. So to those of you with experience, does an amplified mahog tenor sound different than an amplified red cedar tenor for instance? Since Mi-Si is an undersaddle pickup, I'm guessing it wouldn't make much difference. Is that true?

Thanks for your thoughts!

The tone wood will have relatively little affect on the signal from an under saddle transducer. That's not to say that there will be no effect, but it will not be as significant with a UST as it would be on a soundboard transducer or microphone. This is why some artists prefer a soundboard transducer even though such are typically more susceptible to handling noise and feedback - the soundboard transducer generally produces a signal that more faithfully reproduces the acoustic tone of the instrument.

Also, keep in mind that how heavily the signal will be amplified (with respect to the position of the uke soundboard) also matters. I.e. usually a softer top wood like cedar will feed back at high volumes more readily than a hardwood like mango or mahogany. Again, there is less difference with a UST than with a soundboard transducer or microphone, but there is some tone wood dependency.

All that said, an UST is much more convenient and "trouble free" in a live performance environment, which is why they are so popular on all kinds of acoustic instruments.


John

It may have more effect than you might think, if....................you use a high quality acoustic amplifier and the pickup is very good quality.

Thanks for the replies. The pickup is a Mi-Si, into a Roland AC33 amp. I haven't gotten the uke yet. I was debating between mahogany and cedar/rosewood. I've had a mahog uke before, so decided on the cedar/rosewood tenor. I usually perform solo, and volume levels aren't extremely high. I expect my vocal mic will pick up some uke sound, as it has in the past. But it hasn't picked up enough to make the Mi-Si unnecessary. I'll report back when I have the uke in hand. Meanwhile, other thoughts and experiences are welcome!

Instruments...and all their component parts...and pickups are essentially a feedback loop. Anything that affects/changes how the strings vibrate, which is anything the strings are connected to, affects how the strings themselves vibrate. That is then fed into the pickup...any pickup. An extreme example of this is to use magnetic pickups as used mostly on "electric guitars and basses". If you take the humbucker from a Les Paul and put it on a Martin D-28, the sound is very, very different. There will be certain common frequency anomalies imposed upon the string signal in both cases, but the underlying sound will be dependent upon the construction of the instruments. If you go to less extreme examples, the effects will be less, but still there.