Indeed, all the figured claro I have is pretty dead sounding. Straight grained black walnut rings pretty well, though. And straight grained butternut sounds very good. I have a top from Artisan Lumber that I need to come up with a design for. I'll probably end up just copying Ken C's butternut/black walnut combo. That thing was purdy
In terms of tapping to see if a guitar sounds good... don't judge until you have the box assembled. You probably won't get that long echo like you do with low damping, lightly braced backs, but that doesn't mean it can't sound good. Using it as a soundboard would be pretty iffy, though. But I'm still tempted to try it, since I have a bundle of gorgeous curly claro from utarazo which included an extra back.