Thanks for the advice :)

I have been practicing my rhythm in Drop-D and the tuning seems to remain pretty consistant without muddying up too much. It seems to have little effect on the trem system although the intonation needed some tweaking.

Playing on clean has helped my technique, some of my smaller mistakes were covered by the distortion so that has helped no end.

I personally have got used to using the small hard picks (1mm Dunlop stubbys) , they seem to accentuate the tone much better than others i have tried. It also seems to have improved the picking accuracy and timing.