I'm thinking a 1" scribe and 42" cabinets. This gives me ~ 18" to counter and tons more storage. I've bounced back and forth between 39" and 36" cabinets. Anyone ever done this?

I've narrowed it down to wolf classic - Dartmouth.

http://www.wolfhomeproducts.com/system/files/FULL%20LINE%20brochure.pdf

What is the tallest appliance you have? You may want more space between counter top and bottom of the upper cabinet. A KitchenAid mixer with tilt head needs to be pulled out to use it properly.

The only thing I didn't like about the wold cabinets are the shelf supports. Really difficult to adjust shelves and we had the finish rip off while trying to take them out of the plastic brackets. Whom ever does the install ask to see the brackets first or ask if there are just simple supports the shelves can rest on.

We installed 42" upper cabinets in our previous house similar to your description. It worked great. Not only gave us more storage but gave the illusion of a higher ceiling.

I would not do it now simply because I am older and would not be able to utilize those upper shelves. I've adopted the philosophy of "If I can't reach it, I don't need it."

ps -- 18" clearance is more than what I have now with normal 36" upper cabinets.

Have never had an issue with ours. Our KitchenAid mixer now has its own base cabinet but when it didnt never had an issue with the clearance. That's because you dont use the mixer pushed back against the wall anyways. Everyone always uses the mixer as close to the edge of the counter as possible for ease of access. Here are a few pics to see how it looks to get an idea of the space you have available.

18" is plenty. And pushing cabinets to the ceiling to get rid of that stupid 4"-8" gap looks great.

Go all the way to the ceiling. It looks good even if you don't use the additional storage space. I am looking at a kitchen face lift & I just removed all the "junk decor" from the tops of mine. I wish my cabinets went all the way to my 9 ft ceilings!

If you have a Keurig, you definitely want to have the 18" spacing. We had 17" spacing at the last house and the Keurig had to be pulled out from under the cabinet to operate it so I made sure when we redid the kitchen at the current house that I had at least 18"...ended up with 18-1/4" so even our Kitchenaid mixer works well under the cabinet since it requires a minimum 17-3/4" space. But as others noted above, we too pull it forward for ease of use.

We went with 36" uppers leaving a 4" spacing above the upper cabinets that I wanted as I included switched outlets above them and ran LED rope lighting on top of the cabinets for ambience lighting. We love the look...

Sounds great to me
although other like to display & dust the cabinet tops, some even light them, which bounces off ceiling to good effect. I agree with you = storage is key & better up top when rarely used than in attic.

Note some counter appliances need more height than 18" rarely, so adjust that one cabinet.