While your Zebra wood is heavy, you will find the maple a bit lighter.

For myself (regarding weight of a ten button) it does not matter, because I am one of those hay wire sitter downer players.... I simply have no reason to stand and strap up while playing... as a result it make little differance to me what the weight of the wood is, short of Iron Wood that is... ha.

The exterior wood will not make a differance in the loudness of your accordion (for what I know). The curly maple will be lighter. I have three Quilted Maples, and, there are vast differances in each as far as how loud they are accoustically. My Walnut is a mellow traditional dry tune and not at all accoustically loud (to me compared to the others).

Now then:
Some will say it is the hardness and design of the reed blocks.... some say it is the reeds (manufacture type of reeds)... some will say that it is the hole vs. a square hole (sounds funny eh?) on the sliders.

All I know is that some accordions are real screamers in terms of accoustically loud, while others are mellow. The loudest I have, happens to be that Cajun Classic with the Antonelli reeds. That (in terms of loud) works fine because I am fairly soft on my playing style with a lessor amount of stress across the reeds than perhaps others.

Make a noticable differance in amplifing the sound (you ask)??
As far as the exterior wood, I really don't think so.
I do think the key (as in C, D, Bb, A) can have something to do with how much you can get from a box accoustically.

Perhaps Jude Moreau can shed some light on what makes some boxes louder than others .. a builders perspective, that is.

Also, What do others think?? What makes it loud?

Nonc D