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Comparing Burton with Paisley is somewhat like comparing apples to oranges. Both great players and appear to be nice guys. That being said
Burton has a 40+ year career - Paisley 5 years or less
A major difference is that Burton is studio player so he has played on or for many artist covering a wide range of styles (country, rock, pop). Thought I read somewhere that he plays on some Frank Sinatra stuff. As a studio player, he is there to support the song and or artist, thus there are limited solos and sutle fills etc.
Paisley so far has really only played guitar on his stuff. Thus since he is the "star" he can (may be) be a little flashier. Of course, most of his playing also is in support of the song so again not a lot of solos for solos sake. It is important to note that many artist don't play guitar on their records even if they are good or may play live.
Eric Clapton generally doesn't do long solos when guesting on other artists recording projects (excluding where long solos may be expected e.g., Mayall).
Comparisons between different players styles is can be useful and is interesting (may help you narrow down how you might play). We can have "favorite" players. But this there is really no way to determine the best (fastest, etc.) so why to we do this. Of course, we could have a guitar toss, than you could have the best guitar tosser, because he or she would toss it the furthest or strongest because he can pick up the most guitars.
Because Burton has had a much longer and more diverse career compared to Paisley it would seem to me that if there was (were) a method(s) to rate those criteria mention in the intial post that you would be able to find something by Burton (shear numbers) that would top Paisley.
I would rather just acknowledge that both are excellent players and leave it go at that.
JMO
Jim
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