Pretty much what the title says. I was wondering if the string hopping motion has its place in the toolbox of picking techniques or not.
To play really short staccato notes where you mute the note with the pick just after playing it, I think string hopping is the only way to do it.
I actually had a guitar teacher with long career telling me that this technique was one he used to teach to all of his students. And he said it was one of his most rewarding ones for building alternate picking control and speed. At that time I had no clue about CTC but later realised what he was teaching was actually pure string hopping. So no wonder so many of us have had problems. 
To me, there is absolutely no use or advantage to using hopping/bouncing for single-string picking. The only reason I can think of to use it, is because its easier to learn than curved X-picking method.
However, the hopping/bouncing mechanic is kinda-sorta used for strumming in one direction. In general… my strumming mechanic is almost identical to my single-string mechanic. But when I need to do consecutive down-strumming… I’ll kinda do an upward strumming motion without hitting the strings to get back into position each time… and it sorta resembles ‘bouncing’
This would be “down-picking” right. The normal way of playing metal chugging riffs. So is down-picking actually the same movement as string hopping universally?
No, because you’re avoiding the string on the way back. You’re basically tracing an oval in the air where the bottom of the oval plays the string, and the top misses it.
Stringhopping plays the string in both directions, upstroke and downstroke, just inefficiently!
Ah right! A thinko from my part here. 
If it’s so inefficient, I wonder why do players like Eric Johnson like to use it (the “bounce” technique, as he calls it)?
Eric only uses it for medium-speed playing, not for continuous fast playing. Part of the confusion of the scenes on those two instructional videos is that he is mixing up several concepts together, and calling them all “bounce”. In reality, bounce is the stringhopping motion, edge picking is edge picking, the pickslanting movement is another thing, and so on. When Eric clicks into fast mode, there is no more “bounce”. It’s the more efficient pickslanting motion that takes over.
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Plain and simple: He likes how it sounds when he does it.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong in doing inefficient techniques if it’s the ticket for getting to sound how you want and/or if it feels good to you. Another example would be the DDU roll, like e.g. Clarence White would do.
So yeah… stringhopping does have a place in the toolbox.
No, it’s not really hopping, and as Troy said, it’s more of an oval… but it’s the closest thing I do to hopping… since it kinda resembles the one-string hopping that I used to do pre-X-picking.
Another thought about why string-hop (or ‘scissor pick’, or ‘sewing-machine pick’): cheap guitars! No disrespect; I’m grateful to the manufacturers who made the guitar accessible to me financially. But I noticed that the more pick edge I used, the worse they sounded (especially acoustic, but electric too) - and so I compensated by string hopping. My theory, but pretty sure about it. If I’m right, that might partially explain how a lot of us got into this habit in the first place. (I’m talking of course about ‘bad’ hopping, not EJ’s deliberate and useful application of the hop.)
I’m curious as to why elite players revert to stringhopping when they slow down to demononstrate a lick or phrase. Troy has pointed out EJ and Battio doing this and I seem to remember other examples here. Why do they do it?
If they are trying to demonstrate the concept alternate picking or a specific pattern of up/downstrokes, they will exagerate motions, purely for the camera, thus not be using their actual motions. Also, they probably don’t think they are doing anything different from what they normally do - just bigger motions. Obviously now, we know differently.
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Personally I’ve worked so hard to eliminate it from my faster playing that I try not use it ever…so as not to bring it back. I know it’s a brain thing…I can play slowly without reverting to string hopping (as far as I can tell).
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Eric Johnson has talked about “the bounce” extensively over the years, saying that he prefers the resulting attack.
When you bounce, the edge of the pick bows along the string on both the upstroke and the downstroke and has a softer release. If you do it just right, there’s a slight “blooming” quality to the note.
More efficient picking motions “break through” the string on the upstroke and downstroke, which results in a harder, more percussive attack.
It might be a subtle thing, and maybe it wouldn’t be worth it for everybody, but I can understand working a little harder with an inefficient technique at lower speeds if you like the results.
I don’t know about Batio, for him it might have just been a way to exaggerate his movements for the camera as suggested.
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