A follow up - the S1 arrived yesterday and I have to say I have a bit of buyers remorse and think perhaps I should have went with the Pono. Perhaps I had much higher expectations for the S1 from all the reading I have done that mentioned how the S-O was Matin's "welcome back" to the ukulele world and they could have done better - enter the S1.
I have to say that I like my S-O better than this S1. Maybe I just happen to have a very good version of the S-O, and the S1 I received is a sub par offering (we all know how acoustic construction varies from instrument to instrument of the same model).
The first thing I noticed was how thin the S1 sounds compared to my S-O. Now, I have read how well liked the Martin 600 flourocarbon strings are but I've never tried them before. I was looking forward to trying them with the S1 as they come standard on it, but I have to say I do not like them at all. As I said above, and it could be the instrument, but they sound thin with no depth. My S-O has Nylgut on it, which I really like the tone of.
Seeing how the instrument is in the return period, I contemplate trying to find different strings that it might like - like I said, I wonder if it's the instrument and not the strings. The action and setup feels good, intonation is spot on, just sounds thin and dull. There is however a dead note on the A string fourth fret that will need some fret work I believe to alleviate. The surrounding frets are fine on that string, just the one fret. Oh well, we'll see.