Aye, I wholeheartely agree with you and perhaps, even take it to the extreme... I don't even cover songs.
I rem telling myself that I want to be different and if I started learning songs then I would end up playing like those guitarists, therefore, don't learn, DIY all the way... hahaha... good and bad lah eh?
I love reading up and doing licks on the magazines because they are usually the writier's interpretation of the style of the artiste. Its fun to play them out and get those ideas incorporated into my playing.
All along, I've been an economy picking player... look at my picking hand in the vid, it hardly moves.
The difficulty arises when doing string skipping or patterns that go against the flow of picking. SO.... its time to figure out something else...
...and the other way I figured to go since I can't pick as fast/accurately as I like... is to do legato and tapping. So thats an area I'm looking at now, lots of legato and tapping ideas... and for the tapping, I want to be able to tap without any form of external muting (tying a sock round the neck lah, using hair bands, etc) and tap out scales in odd patterns. SOmething to that extent... it will be some time before i will know if thats for me.
Oh dear... gotta go do some work now... hahaha...