Hi, my name is Alexander, I’m from Russia (from Siberia – very far away from anything else!). Let me introduce myself.
I started playing guitar around 10 (30 years ago). I learned by ear a lot of guitar parts from rock and pop songs back then (Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, etc.), I also used to just sit and improvize along with any recording or with a radio. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any electric guitar instructional videos or books for quite a long time, they were just impossible to get in USSR, I didn’t even know they existed. I had several books on classical guitar, but they didn’t cover everything I was eager to know. Still I learned tuning, neck, legato, scales, notation, etc. from these books. By the way, because of this later I thought the terms “hammer-on” and “pull-off” were redundant – for me it was the same technique called “legato”.
I only had very low-quality acoustic guitar with very high action and no access beyond 12th fret. (When I first played someone’s electric, it was some kind of shock – due to low action the instrument literally played by itself.)
I think I figured three-notes-per-string principle by myself while trying to get down a legato passage from Steve Vai’s Erotic Nightmares (as opposed to classical guitar style irregular scale fingerings). Then a guy at some local jam explained me alternate picking concept – until then I’ve never thought about it. After that explanation I realized that when I play ascending lines, I use legato in some places to make things easier (so it’s not alternate picking), but I pick every note when descending in D-D-U fashion (no alternate picking again). Why I can’t play an ascending line the same way – this I couldn’t understand back then. So I judged that my playing was basically wrong. 
Eventually I got my hands on Vinnie Moore and Paul Gilbert VHS tapes (and later some other stuff) and it was also all about alternate picking. I abandoned that strange wrong technique I developed by myself (partial legato ascending, economy descending) and put my efforts into alternate picking. Stuff from those tapes turned out to be easy to play for most part, but I still felt something was lacking. I couldn’t smoothly play 3nps scale from 6th to 1st string and back, for instance. In general, some phrases were very playable, while others were not, no matter how long I’ve practiced them, and I didn’t know why. After that I sort of stopped improving my guitar technique, being content (and at the same time frustrated) with it as it is. I had a time when I haven’t played guitar for about two years, I didn’t even own an instrument (very strange).
When I came across Troy’s material on YouTube a couple of years ago, initially I didn’t quite like it because it looked too polished and good The word “pickslanting” was everywhere, I thought something like “oh, must be another fancy term for what I already know and it doesn’t work”. Also Troy’s speech sounded very like the one of a professional salesman. But soon I was very involved (thanks to Troy’s playing and actually very meaningful talking), became interested the whole concept, liked that analytical, scientific vibe a lot, purchased a Pickslanting Primer and felt that finally I have the comprehensive explanation for my picking habits and problems. I realized that my initial technique (alternate picking with some hammer-ons ascending, economy descending) wasn’t exactly wrong, it was just upward-pickslanting. What I like a lot about Troy’s system, is that now I know why some things are very playable for my hands while others aren’t.
Also, as I watched Cracking The Code series, at some moments I was impressed at how actually similar some things about music were back then, in spite of how different our countries are (USSR and USA). Even songs and solos we were interested in were the same. I was trying to decipher Eddie’s solo from Jump, listening to it over and over again and hitting pause after hearing a portion of notes. I also had that Yngwie instructional video, and some of his albums (learned intro from Trilogy). And so on.
That’s all for now, thank you for your attention and sorry for any mistakes in English
