Anybody have any experience building guitars?

[LeftOfSelf-Centered]

2. Thanks!

I have lots of questions, since I've never done anything like this before. I'll start off with something basic but important: woods.

A quick note about what I play: I play mostly rock, from standard rock/punk crunch to metal (but nothing extreme). I usually keep my guitars tuned half-step or a full step down to better accommodate my voice and when I bring teh metalz I go to Drop C tuning. Though occasionally I might need to use standard tuning, which makes choosing the right string gauge a nightmare. At the moment I have no active bands so I only record, just running my guitar straight into my computer and do the sound with VSTs.

Ok, so here's my basic idea for the guitar: single cutaway, semi-hollow body, two humbuckers, one volume (push/pull coil split), one tone, three way toggle.

Warmoth's LP5S shape is perfect, although it seems Gibson slapped Warmoth with a cease and desist order for their body shapes. I did eventually find the configuration page, but I don't know if I'll be able to buy it.

I still have to read up on woods, so for now I just followed more or less what Framus was doing to get a price point; maple body with birdseye maple top, maple neck with ebony fingerboard. Warmoth lists Maple as a very bright sounding wood, which should be ok since I tend to keep Treble and Presence high on my sounds (but that's on a digital VST, so may be irrelevant). Do you have any other wood suggestions?