Peter T: I just listened to the first Dylan Lp for interest. You will here a much greater range of guitar licks and stuff there, he is fooling around with fingerpicking, blues, slide etc. But as you say, he settled on solid flat picking as what he wanted under his "big songs" of the second two records, generally speaking. He learnt like a sponge, mastered everything, and then generally moved on if it didnt suit him. The first LP shows him outplaying and out singing his contemporaries in about as many styles as there are songs on the record. Nauseating little shit, wasn't he??
   I dont mean outplaying everyone in terms of technique: he would just learn enough Travis picking, or whatever, to use effectively. He was never a guitar nerd. But he played evrything he did with great power and commitment in the 61-66 period, and it shows.