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The characteristic sound you will be looking for is alot of initial volume at the first attack but then not alot of sustain remaining as that is what would make a flamenco sound muddy. The more "dry" and explosive the initial attack is, the more that a flamenco player will like it.
Having said that, for your tops how did you treat the thickness differently between the Englemann and the Sitka? While each can vary, in general the Sitka top will be heavier but because of greater stiffness be able to be thinned more so the weight should come out very close to an Englemann top that is left thicker.
For the one you have pictured above that is bound, have you tapped in the area of the bridge and listened to the sound coming out the soundhole? You should be able to feel the air moving well and get a sense of its all around resonance.
It is not so much a certain pitch as it is how focused the sound is and whether the overtones you are hearing from the sound are balanced or mostly high partials. It is all subjective but can be an indicator as to whether the top is still too thick or whether it can stand more thinning.
The Reyes plan is a good one but for me my target as far as a flamenco builder goes is Barbero or for an earlier model Santos Hernandez but you cant go wrong with Reyes.
If you play and want to learn Flamenco, it is really fun and much more tolerant than most traditional classical circles. I play classical mostly but take flamenco lessons from a flamenco master.
A flamenco lesson (at least the ones I take) are very interesting in that it is not about learning Sor or Tarrega and the typical classical repetoire but rather Flamenco has very stylized forms (tempo, cadence, length, etc) that frame much of the music but they are really the framework within which the improvisional performance of flamenco takes place.
When I go for a lesson, I do not sit playing from a book, instead I am in the middle of the flamenco group as most of flamenco has little to do with the individual performer and more about the interplay of the group and how everyone feeds off the other performers emotion and energy.
Think of the dancer as the conductor that sets the pace. The beat starts the palmas, the handclaps that set the beat. Next the guitar takes the rhythm of the song and adds chords and melody lines to create the foundation of the sound.
The singer gets inspired by the guitarist and sings his or her plaintive song on top of or in counterpoint to the guitar which then creates an emotional response in the dancer that adds punctuation to the lines created by the singer and guitarist.
Bystanders will add their calls of encouragement to the group spurring them on to greater swells of sound and feeling. Everyone can participate in the experience and can augment the beats by adding their own handclaps or drumbeats. The cajon is a wooden box that is used as a drum and is something that obviously started as someone using whatever resonant surface was handy to add their beat.
As you are starting out the guitar is all about accompaniment but as guitarist progress they become more daring and will take their turn by adding lines and runs that show the virtuosity of the player and the passion that they are adding into the mix. Some nights everyones energy will be low qand other times one persons attitude and emotion take an entire group to a place musically that there did not forsee. That sense of the moment, the spirit and emotion is called the "duende".
I know a number of classical builders that found flamenco so seductive and the players far less picky that the now build almost exclusively flamenco guitars. Among them are Eugene Clark, Les Stansell, Lester DeVoe and others. For me, for every 7 classical I build, I am building 3 flamencos.
Even some of the classicals I build are "blancas". Jose Romanillos whose classicals I favor really likes the sound of a blanca classical as that is what alot of Torres guitars were.
In Torres day there was no such thing as a flamenco guitar, just guitars built with more expensive or less expensive woods. Because Cypress was so plentiful and a weed tree, many Torres guitars were Cypress. Today Cypress is thought of as a flamenco.
It is only in the 20th century with the advent of the flamenco guitar as a solo instrument with the virtuosity of players such as Richardo Nino, Sabicas, Montoya, Paco De Lucia and others that the form of the guitar changed to reduce the sustain so that runs would not sound muddy. That change lead to the elimination of the bottom diagonal cross braces, building much thinner, action so low that buzzing is inevitable and other things we associate today with a flamenco guitar but it all started as the same guitar as Torres built.
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