I'll just throw another veiw ito the works here, my machines limit my body blank choice, i have to have a 2+ peice body as my planer is only 300mm wide, my blanks when glued up are wider than that. I do buy one peice tho, rip it up the center plane then glue back together, the grain matches near perfect. On my first i put a mahogany strip down an ash body. You cant do nice touches like that with a 1 peicer. well you can, but you have to make it a 2 peicer first.
Make it work for you, if 1 peice is what you want to have then have a 1 peice. Do a search for stew's stewcraft (i think thats what it was called) it was made out of multiple strips of wood and cleared over, it looked fantastic.
and that quarter over flat sawn, what i heap of voodoo. i can take my flat sawn neck blank, turn it to the quarter orientation, itl sound the same i bet.