I believe Frank Gambale used a bit of upstroke pinch harmonics.
And this guy uses it too:
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Cool stuff - I have seen Paul Gilbert do some yelping upstroke notes - but they don’t sound like P.H.'s more like a hybrid of P.H.s and scratchy scraping. Don’t know if you could easily do that upstroke P.H. after the super precise alternate muting - but anything is possible on the guitar!
But that riff def’ starts with a upstroke - he says that in the terrifying guitar trip vid 
Egg on face moment - I just checked on you tube - at 0.25 speed - yup he starts with a downstroke !!! - that’s this vid:
Also looks like he is full on economy picking the 6 note runs - shocking! lol
I will have to check the metal dog version now - oh dear
yup - looks like metal dog is also starting with a downstroke
Uhm, to me it looks like alternate picking with very small pickstrokes 
I played this tune a lot as a teenager. I used strict alternate picking, beginning on a downstroke.
I used the picking method I’ve referred to here as “Mode 1,” which is a double-escape motion with an approximately neutral pickslant and a lot of leading edge picking.
super hard to tell on the vid - a few times it looks like he misses a pick motion. Think the vid is 30fps - gives us a nyquist of 15fps - the fast notes are 13fps - close to the temporal nyquist - could just be that is just misleading my vision
great info - that’s exactly what my current “economy hoping” thing does - flat perpendicular attack on the mutes and a hop to escape (I guess that’s the terminology).
Did you ever manage to replicate that tone - that’s my big issue - it’s not a thrash chug - more like a “Lead scuff” with a tiny hint of chug underneath. I think he was using the dimarzio super distortions or some such pickup that has the 640hz bump that gets that great scuff sound.
I have a write up of the picking techniques I use and some video demonstrations in this thread:
Mode 1 is the method I used for Paul Gilbert tunes.
I felt I could get a decent imitation of the palm muted tone Gilbert gets, but he sometimes gets a “snarl” sound that I’ve never quite been able to replicate.
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Not surprised - in other videos I’ve seen on picking technique, Gilbert says he likes to use a lot of edge picking when playing muted with gain to get a “cello-like” sound. I’m not sure I hear it, exactly, but it’s definitely a big part of his sound.
umm the intro to fuzz universe - that whacka-whacka muting sound is the cello picking - I think with the injector pickups to bring out the High’s
Thanks!! - will study it - I’m currently drilling “economy hop” for the next few days - so I’ll see if it fits into what I’m doing.
Part of the racer x TD sound is something like a vintage marshal cab - I’ve been scouring my impulses - and that is the closest match for it, I’ve found so far - no idea what the speakers are.
You mean something like the waggon wheel effect?
Careful with the sampling theorem here, one full amplitude (2 * pi) produces two tones as we are talking alternate picking. Still this is a very low fps-number as it all depends on the phase and as it is shiftig (13/15) analyzing movements is unreliable.
13 nps -> 6.5 Hz gives us roughly 5 frames per up/down. In my opinion 10 times the highest frequency would be a sensible value, so 60 fps should be the minimum.
Tom
Ok I think I finally cracked this tone!! yaay
(added guitar only as well - so you can hear the isolated track)
it was all down to my crappy guitar tone!!
This is not a perfect clone of gilbert tone at all - it just makes that “gunning engine continuity” sound, which is what I was after. I’m using my bridge pickup for this. I can’t play the high triplet pulloffs at the moment - because my top string is a 11 and the rest are 9’s lol
I think my problem was I was using far far too much bass on the cab output - and that totally kills the main riff continuity and robs it of the scuff sound that gives it that perfect timing feel.
The other thing I was doing - was picking waaay to hard with a old school trash tone. This caused me to double hit the accent note on the upstroke. I still do occasionally double hit that, but that tone along with the drums kind of hides it.
Here’s my FX pipeline:
My Gate Expander for noise and dynamics: (this is a free VST3 I’ve written - if you can’t fix it hardware fix it in software GitHub - shabtronic/GateXpander: Audio compressor, expander with noise gate functionality)
A 5150 clone (free btw)
Impulse cab:
Korn_twistedTransitor.wav - is the impulse name.
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Sounds cool, can we hear the track isolated?
you want just the guitar on it’s own?
Yeah, would be cool to hear what it sounds like on its own. I have had similar issues gettjng the lower notes to pop a little more and it would be good to hear the raw tone and compare it to mine (not that I can play it to tempo! 
No problem - it’s real nightmare trying to decode a tone - when you have bass/drums mixed it.
I have no problem showing how awful my picking is - it’s sounds disgusting on its own - but this toon is all about the timing
it’s the high end “crunch” on the notes that gives the timing and sound.
Cheers dude.
Don’t be too harsh on yourself, its sounds great. It is a monster tune after all, by one of the legends of picking!
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Hi all!
I have forgotten completely about this riff. These riffs are still way too difficult for me. Currently working on similar licks mechanically speaking from a band called Angra Help to improve TWPS
Wow that’s a great riff!
What I’ve found is - it’s all in the tone - it’s that simple.
I’ve been able to play the TD riff at speed since 2004 (not joking) - and it’s always sounded like complete crap. The things that are making it work for me are as follows:
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Turn bass completely off on the amp
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Pick lightly - it’s like a scraping thing - very hard to explain this
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Some dynamics processing - a downward expander - that really cleans up the 2 string muting riffs
Once you have the right tone - it’s about 1000 times easier to play!
hope that helps
You’d think that… but then go back and watch that video Tommo posted in Sept 2018 when Gilbert is playing this, at tempo, with a clean/edge of breakup tone, with (high output, to be fair) singlecoils. A lot of that “revving” sound is just totally in-the-pocket, precice picking. He’s just good.