Really this is in danger of hijacking Plastic's thread so perhaps it should be moved to a new one but to reply to your post Akira I think you've just moved the goal posts enormously.

I don't think anyone has ever said Satch is ALL shred - Of course he can play blues. Hey I'm getting a sense of deja vu here - Wasn't it me who suggested most shred guitarists learnt their craft playing blues? The point is most of us classify a guitarist as belonging to one genre and in this instance most people would classify Satriani as a shred player. It just rolls of the tongue a little easier than calling him a shred/metal/blues/jazz/acoustic/alternative/classical/country guitarist, because truth be told he probably be pretty good at any of those styles but he just prefers to mostly play shred