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Yet so many player we rave about including there tone use a very slinky gauge like a 9 or less - Billy Gibbons, Steve Lukather, Santana, Brian May, Mark Knopfler, Vai + Satriani, EVH and maybe most surprising of all with his big tone is BB King, Jimmy Page
I think the key issue is to select a gauge that you can handle and feel comfortable with - No use saying I'll have a set of 11's to get a bigger sound, yet in reality can't play or bend them, in which case you'll get a poor sound anyway
I didn't remember using 8's in the 70's but must have if the round plastic Picato "tins" were red for 8's as I have one here.
FWIW my take on this is that feel is all.
For me what feels right these days is 9-46.
With modern guitars like a PRS with a 10" radius and jumbo frets, then even a 10 gauge feels slinky - I've heard many players try such a guitar and ask 'is this strung up' with 9 gauge
I re-string most shop guitars with 10-46, but occasionally on say a 70's Strat or Tele then I might go back to 9-42
It was a weird Gibson set which actually turned out to be the same gauges as a standard 9-42 set, but with an 8 rather than a 9 for the top E.
Anyway, I put them on my Hamer Special and hated them. As I remember it, there didn't seem to be enough "energy" in the strings to make the guitar vibrate. It was like it had died. So I went out and got a set of Dean Markley 10s and I've used 10s ever since.