So I was re-watching the Metronomic Rock DSX seminar the other day and on the circular sixteenths video Tommo mentions that a lot of DSX players tend to alternate pick fully on the lower strings, and add a bit of legato on higher strings. I was wondering if there are some examples of this and footage from players. Personally I have found that on the lower strings and with distortion, I can get away much easier with alternate picking, I believe this has to do with the fact that I tend to add palm muting on the lower strings with distortion and this helps to make swiping much cleaner on top of the left hand muting. Obviously on the higher strings it doesn’t sound too good if you palm mute. I have also found easier to do secondary escape motions on lower and middle string than in higher strings for some reason, I feel it has to do with the tension of the strings and the right hand muting. So, with this, I think it’d be a good way of getting a mostly alternate picking sound by adding legato strategically only on higher strings and using secondary motion approach or DSX plus swiping on the lower strings.
I’m not a DSX’er but the main guitarist that comes to mind with this approach is Paul Gilbert. He’s pretty known for mixing alternate picking and legato on the top 3 strings.
Definitely Paul Gilbert!
IIRC, both Instense rock I and II and Terrifying Guitar Trip are full of this kind of thing.
You just have to watch them with “CTC knowledge” in the back of your mind so that you can spot when this happens 
He does it on all string sets but typically the opposite. Legato on the lower string of the set and alternate picking on the higher ascending. Opposite when descending, but make no mistake it is mostly a stylistic choice as much as it can be ergonomic, and he can pick the whole damn thing if he chooses.
Aha, I found the one that I think is a very typical example of what I had in mind [starts around 55:57]:
That’s the perfect example thank you very much Tommo! Several years ago I watched the Intense Rock series, but never followed the Terrifying guitar trip tapes, I think now it’s the time!
That same lick is tabbed out here by the great @LeviClay88. Nice example of how a DSX player would play it, always picking the notes on the lower strings and picking the ascending half of the notes on the high e but pulling off the rest, feels very natural:
Loads of other great examples as well!
That’s the Viking Kong pattern! He plays it relentlessly during the crescendo of the unaccompanied part of the solo.
This is the typical pattern that I’m thinking of ascending:
I have seen him do the same in reverse.
Interesting! This one with legato on the lower string is not DSX (the picked string change is after an upstroke). I had the impression that there was a correlation between DSX and legato on the higher strings, but again it’s not a hard and fast rule, may be more idiosyncratic/ stylistic.
Oh indeed this requires USX or DBX, rather than DSX, I think this is just further evidence PG can pick it all if he wanted to and is using this for stylistic purposes. I would say though normally the alternate picking plus legato should be faster than strict alternate picking.
How so? It’s pretty DSX adjacent unless I’m misunderstanding the term. Down- h-h on low and u-d-u on the higher string of the pair, and he stays on the same string to start it again. He moving both horizontally and vertically through the strings and is always changing strings after a down. He is also a player I would consider keeping relatively close to the string during the picked parts.
It’s probably anything adjacent really and doesn’t require a stick escape because you have two non picked notes before you have to cross strings to pick again.
It likely is both faster and less taxing. He always did this, but probably started doing it more exclusively later on because it was easier to consistently do, and not as much high effort. He probably liked the sound of it better as well. Have no doubt though that he was probably honest that the influence for him on it was EVH (I’m the one) and he obviously no doubt has heard the intro to the solo of unchain the night which is probably why he references lynch in the vid as well, although I’m sure Paul was probably plugging away at that lick long before ULAK came out.
Ah I confused it with another pattern he always does where after the udu he does move to a different string hence requiring a different escape. But you are totally right, if you don’t change strings after the “u” it becomes compatible with DSX
it’s only DSX compatible if we don’t switch strings after the U, but here, when he does the horizontal movement, he is changing strings in a descending fashion, unless he is using swiping, you would need USX or DBX after that upstroke to hit the new string on a downstroke.
Stay on the same string then or use swiping/grazing/skating. Done. He does both patterns often (jumping back down, and staying on the same) you can find tons of examples of both in his playing.
For him it doesn’t matter like mentioned though. Fwiw, it’s pretty much the same lick as Colorado bulldog just using diatonic scale instead. He is another player like Yngwie that has like 20 some signature licks he will reuses often.