Geeking out with a micrometer the other night, and recorded a bunch of measurements from my ukes, just out of curiosity.
I've seen talk in my travels here of vintage Martin O ukes, and how they often (always?) have thin necks. By thin, I'm talking about from the top of fretboard to back of neck. How thin are those Martin necks, and are the modern ones fatter?
That got me measuring some of my ukes, and I found:
1)Neck fatness: Most of my sopranos are about .65-.67" fat. Ohana tenor is .75", while Pono tenor is biggest at .83". I've heard that Ponos are fatter than most. The surprise was that my Kamaka gold label soprano is only .47" fat. All these measurements were taken near the nut. None of these are a big problem for me, although I like a mid to fat neck, so the Kamaka feels unusual and skimpy sometimes. I bet some folks may get hand cramps from sustained play on such a skinny neck.
2) String Spread: most were the similar at the nut, about 27.5-29mm. At the saddle, the Kamaka string spread was much wider at 45mm, while most of my others are 39-41mm.
3) Top thickness: The solid Kamaka soprano has the thinnest top, only 2mm at the soundhole, while most of my other ukes are 20% thicker, at 2.5mm. Pono mango tenor was thickest at 3mm. Interestingly, the only other uke I've measured with as thin a top as my Kamaka was the Ohana hog TK-35, which was also thin, at only 2mm, but that's a full 33% thinner than the Pono; maybe it's a mango thing.
4) Nut width: all 1 3/8
One thing I've noticed in my recently launched uke adventures is that few, if any manufacturers publish any specs other than scale length, body size and nut width. Neck fatness, top thickness, and string spread at nut and saddle are never mentioned. I suppose most folks probably don't care about those.
