wondering if anybody in the great binary younder has heard of or knows of shawn lane, and if his reputation does or not preceed him.

secondly if anybody has heard of "cossman torture exercises". as far as i'm aware this technique if commonly used by cellist for speed, dexterity etc. i bring this up as it my be of some benefit to those of us who are digitally challanged??

Yes I've heard of and heard Shawn Lane. If you define shred as simply playing really fast, then yeah Lane shreds. I don't know if that's how I define shredding, though. Lane has monster chops (well, for a single string lead guitar player,) but his style isn't really heavy metal, the way most shredding is. He's more analogous to Eric Johnson, with a bit less pop (no singing) and more heavily technical (if that's possible.) I guess he could be called fusion, but that's not a very effective label because it can mean so many things. Check him out, he plays pretty, and he composes interestingly too. I don't absolutely love his stuff, but it's worth hearing.

I think "fusion" would be a fair term if you could infer a "fusion" of rock, classical, some and some jazz. Maybe "progressive" would work as well. He is very good. But I must admit, too, that while some of his stuff is excellent and I really like some of what he does, some of it just doesn't work for me...but that's just one single little opinion. He is a monster shredder, though, for sure.