Neck width

Hello to you all. I just had a question I thought would be worthy of all the knowledge here. I am building a dulcimer kit and and noticed that the neck on this kit is wider than on my other dulcimer. My first dulcimer is an Apple Creek built in Romania.  Its neck is just shy of 1&3/8 inch. Now the neck on this kit is just over 1&1/2 inch. Never having spent time playing ANY OTHER dulcimer than the Apple Creek that I have here its neck never felt particularly narrow to me so I wonder how that extra width will affect the new one's playability? Should I be leaving a smidge more space between the neck edge and the string? Maybe that would be a good use of a bit of the extra room.  Maybe it will lend itself better to a 4 string equidistant setup option? I'm hoping some of you have experienced the same thing and can advise some trains of thought for my ponderance.