Ok...I have no idea why I responded to these like a complete raging asshole.
Sorry about that. I'm looking at my responses now and thinking, "What the fuck was I so mad about?"
BUT.......
I saw this interview snippet with EVH and it reminded me of this... because I think he's talking about what I was trying to describe.
Point I was trying to make then (with a heaping mound of unwarranted assholeishness)... and I think what Ed's talking about here... is that direct into the amp, high gain sound, every time a finger on your left hand brushes the wrong string, every failure to palm mute, is going to make an absolute mess of whatever you're trying to play.
For me in particular, since I'm used to playing bass clef strings that need a lot more effort to play, and even on my acoustic guitar with its broad neck, my tendency in the left hand on the electric guitar is to smack around the other strings when I play. My hands are trained to pull-off and hammer-on with every note rather violently (taught explicitly to do so by cello teachers - the string doesn't speak fast enough without it) ... and that doesn't work at all on a narrow-necked electric at high gain.
As for my right hand, palm muting is an entirely new technique I'm having to learn. Doesn't matter so much on a clean channel; critical at metal gain levels so that you don't end up recording slop.