Can quick-recharge ranger skills make bow speed irrelevant?

If you spam a quick-recharge skill like Quick Shot or Focussed Shot [1 and 2 sec recharge respectively] does this override the speed limitations of the bow you're using? If so, then it follows that a hornbow will be just as fast as a shortbow/flatbow when doing this.

Yup, that's how ranger spike works in PvP

No it will not. However, using skills with a reduced activation time will. A Savage Shot after another attack skill (and/or Quick Shot, the description on that skill is iffy) from a Hornbow will be the same speed as that from a Shortbow. However, they will both fire Focused Shot followed by say... Power Shot at their own rates.

Focused shot will not override the speed, bow attacks that do not state a casting time will use the normal bow speed.

Quick shot, needling shot, smite, and all the interrupts have specific cast times, 1/2 second for an interrupt, 1 second for QS. Unfortunately, interrupts have a 1.5 second aftercast in which you cannot attack, ruining any chains.
You could, however, spam quick shot and needling shot back and forth with no downtime, giving you a 1 second attack with a hornbow which, if I did my math right, is 270% increased attack speed.

My typical quickshot build is dual shot + quickshot + needling shot + savage shot + kindle arrows + favorable winds, with savage shot ending any chains.

A curiosity build to look at is quickshot + needling shot + smite + savage shot. Smite work just like quickshot, but has a more restrictive energy cost. The bonus is that you get an insanely long chain going.

Thanks for the info - sort of suspected this might be the case from experimenting with Focused Shot and different bows. Won't ditch the shortbow then!

I would actually recommend using a Horn Bow. That's the most used bow type for ranger spike, the reason being that it has 10% inherent armor penetration, and this kind of setup offsets its slow fire rate.