2017 Spruce House Redwood Soprano Ukulele

Update 2019: This uke came back in for sale so I've updated the pictures, description, and added a video clip.

Spruce House ukes are made in Eugene, Oregon (where my uncle lives!), by Mr. Al McWhorter. He seems to have a fondness for native woods and the top on this one is proclaimed to be "ancient figured redwood." It's nice stuff! The back and sides are sapele (which is the same mahogany-family species that replaces mahogany on many new Martin guitars) and the design and sound of this uke remind me ever-so-much of the wide-body Favilla ukes from the '40s. Like those, it's sweet and warm in tone and, while decently-loud, quite mellow.

While construction was sound on this when it came in, it did need the frets seated (with some gluing-in of their tangs), a good fret level/dress, and a good setup. Now that those prerequisites are done, it plays beautifully with a straight neck and 1/16" action at the 12th fret. It's currently wearing a brand-new set of D'Addario fluorocarbon strings and sounds great. Between 2017 and 2019, the owner had added some Gotoh UPTs to it but wanted to keep them, so when this came in I added some Kluson-style guitar-type tuners to the headstock to replace the UPTs and their footprint (and maintain ease-of-use).

Scale length: 13 1/2"
Nut width: 1 3/8"
String spacing at nut: 1 1/16"
String spacing at saddle: 1 3/8"

Body length: 9 3/8"
Lower bout width: 7"
Upper bout width: 5 1/8"

Side depth at endpin: 2 1/8"

Top wood: solid redwood
Back/sides wood: solid sapele
Neck wood: sapele
Fretboard: ebony

Neck shape: lat board, mild-medium D rear

Bridge: ebony

Nut: ebony

Isn't that top awesome? It's a full 7" on the lower bout, too. The shallow 2 3/16" depth of the body, however, makes it not "feel" any larger than normal.

The nut, fretboard, bridge, and saddle are described as ebony -- but if so it's ebony that's been "ebonized" to make it uniformly black. During my adjustments and fret work I rubbed the edges a bit and revealed some lighter wood with the wear.

The nut is 1 3/8" in width and it has a 13 7/16" scale. The neck has a mild D-shaped profile to it.

It comes with a plain-Jane gigbag.