So right man. When I talk to people who love to death people like Yngwie, Vai, Petrucci, they usually say stuff like "I like this song because its insane what he's doing over here," or "Can you believe he's playing sweep arpeggios THAT fast!"
As for having the technique, i think its useful, but only as one aspect out of many that makes up a good guitarrist. Most shredders I've met who have much better technique than I do would suck comping for a soloist because they never bothered to learn the sets of voicings up the fretboard. That's JUST AS IMPORTANT a technical skill on the guitar, to be able to switch betwen memorized chords and use voice leading over any progression. It's one thing to pick 32nd notes cleanly, but that's got a very, very limited application in tasteful good music. In guitar wank music you hear it all the time, but try to find somebody who's not a guitarrist who can listen to that stuff and say they think its fun to listen to, and you'll have quite a task on your hands.
In my opinion, if you have somebody who's primary audience is guitarrists, they're very likely not worth listening to. There's no point in listening to a guitarrist who's showing all the other guitarrists out there how fast he can play.
A. It's been done before.
B. There's nothing musical about it.
