Hi Charlie,
Wow. Looks good! Yeah I think that would help a lot. It would save a lot of trouble compared to fiddling with PBR textures when you can just adjust some parameters until it looks right. Nice work!
To answer your earlier question, I've been mostly interested in hardwoods lately: cherry, walnut, bamboo, oak, and the like. I'm still very new at this though so I'm not sure what defaults would be more generally useful.
Just for fun, here is a draft of a relief I'm working on in Blender for my video game-loving siblings and myself. The plan is to put it on a display-only side of a cutting board.
Chris