I'm in the process of my finishing my own builds, so I understand your pain.

For shear versatility I went with an HSS design. With some simple wiring modification you can achieve quite a wide variety of tones from a single instrument. If you want to avoid the noise inherent in a standard single coil pickup there are multiple noiseless single coils offerings out there you can pick from.

For help with wiring designs, as well as a source of information for your own concepts, I would suggest dropping by Guitar Nuts 2.

The best advise I can offer you is to use the best parts you can lay your hands on. If that means haunting eBay for months, then so be it. The neck is the most critical component you’ll buy, so don’t go cheap here, or all you work will yield poor playability and even less fun… After that, the bridge and tuners need to be of the best quality you can afford as well. For a nut, I was very happy with the Tusq nut I put on my bass, and have bought them for both build guitars.

Much ado is made about tonewood. I would suggest that the quality of the work and the skill of the craftsman will have more of a direct effect on the quality of the tone from the instrument. I would bet that most tone snobs could not readily identify an alder, ash, mahogany or maple body blindfolded, so stick with your choice of build wood.

Happy Trails

Cynical One