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According to the American Dialect Society accent-central for the US used to be somewhere around Boone County, Missouri. The further North, East, South or West you go from there the more pronounced your accent.
I'm not sure how accurate that data is anymore because people are moving around the country a lot more. There is also the influence of TV and other media as kids grow up listening to it.
As for the Southern accent, I am a transplanted Columbian (Missouri) ... which is in Boone County. I'm now in Memphis. I can hear numerous Southern accents. The "regular", the redneck, the high-society, the lazy, the cajun and more. They all have a distinct intonation. Even different cities have different accents. There's the Memphis accent as compared to the Knoxville accent. Nashville doesn't count because of all the NY and LA transplants there.
In relation to stereotypical images, when I hear a Japanese accent I think "student."
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