Hi guys
I had years of rock and jazz background before knowing anything about pick slanting and crosspicking terms.
After knowing these concepts, I analyzed myself. I found that with distortion I naturally played with downward pickslanting. I think that to my ears a good rock tone included that snappier sound after the pickstroke and downward pickslanting leaded me towards that (without even knowing).
On the other side, when I played jazz with clean tone, I found the opposite: I tended to use crosspicking. With this kind of picking I tended to pick softer to remove that snappier aggressive sound. I tried to play my old jazz clean licks changing the cross picking to pick slanting, and they did not sounded right to my ears.
Did you notice the phenomenon?