[maxr]

We read that Rickenbacker strung their electric 12 strings with the lower octave string on the left of the pair (looking at the top) so the sound wasn't too bright - and most if not all 12 string acoustics come the other way round, with the lower octave string of each octave pair on the right.

So, if you flatpick down on an acoustic 12, you usually hit the high octave string first, if you pick up, you hit the lower octave first, and if you pick 'down up down up' you alternate. On chords, I guess this doesn't matter much with a big sound jangly 12 - but it seems to me that a scale run with alternate direction picking on a birght 12 (eg a male Guild) is likely to produce brighter sounds on every 2nd note. On the other hand, with fingerpicking the thumb mostly hits the higher octave strings first, while the fingers mostly pick up and hit the lower octaves.

So what? Well, does this suggest that for flatpicking tunes on a 12 you might sound better picking down all the time, and for fingerpicking you might try to play all the octave sets with thumb downstrokes - or do you think any inconsistency of sound doesn't really matter?