Action, technique, or something else?

[V-man]

I have been re-learning some old thrash, attempting to correct the sloppiness of youth lately.

 

I have been learning Over The Wall from Testament. I was playing my explorer 90, which is a stringthrough, then I picked up the KV2 (floyd rose) and went over the same riffs. In about 5 min, I started feeling this grazing irritation. It felt like the inside of my hand was rubbing against sharp fret edges on the treble side of the neck. When I turned my hand over and looked at the palm, there was the irritation, just at the first joint of the pinky. It wasn't sharp frets, however. There are clearly E-string impressions cut in the finger.

 

Now, what I am wondering is whether this is caused by the action being too high requiring adjustment, my pinky technique being sloppy, which needs to be reshaped around the board (I have small hands), or that's the nature of the beast/FR and I need to suck it up. Any ideas?

[Fuelish]

Play the Explorer??? .... or play more often and man up to the wear and tear ??? I surely doubt it's solely the FR to blame .... different string gauges, perhaps ??? Could be any or all of the possibilities you brought up..... different guitars often do require different "techniques" to play comfortably .... take some time and find what works for YOU