Anyway, after playing a gig, I've come to realize that it's going to take me one hell of a long time to get up to speed. ie: I want to be as good with the pinky finger as I am without it (Jeff Beck hand position, say, compared to classical guitar position for those metal riffs, shredding) but I don't want to take another 10 years to do it. Can I play killer metal riffs or "shred" without the pinky finger? Because I sure as hell can't play anything else with it.

Stupid pinky finger and the desire to shred.

(Note: I can play anything else in rock. Anything. After a month I've come to realize that I don't want to lose all that just to be able to single pick a scale at an incredible rate. Maybe life outside the pentatonic box isn't meant to be for me. I was a jazz bassist for 9 years and at least 5 on the piano and violin so it's not as if I'm ignorant about theory. It's just the influencing styles up to this point on guitar didn't require the pinky finger or anything other then the pentatonic scale.)