Re: The way my guitar sounds best to me is contrary to playi
I went from 8s all the way up to 13s in E standard because each bigger set "sounded better".
Nowadays i am back down to 10s, because frankly, i was just playing worse with the really heavy gauges. To a degree your hands get stronger, but i played 13s for about three years, and my hands never got to the point where they could do what they could with the lighter gauges. When i dropped from 13 to 10 though it was fucking crazy.
If there was a simple way to keep my hands as strong as they were with the 13s, but still play the 10s, i would be all over it. Playing the lighter gauges does make your hand get lazier though. I tried stringing one guitar with 13s to practice on, but it wasn't my #1 guitar, so i practically never played it.
But yeah, these days, i get shit sounding as good as i can, but with the strings set at whatever is most comfortable for me to play. It is one of those things to me where: 1. yes, if i A/B the gauges, the thicker ones are going to win, but 2. without that A/B i cannot hear the gauge. If you compare what other guitarists use, it is often surprising. There are a lot of guys who are running 9s and even 8s. I mean, not generally when tuned down to C#, but even still. Without a direct comparison to a thicker gauge, you can't hear it.
Also very much worth noting, IMO, is that a lot of what folks hear as the big strings sounding "better" has at least in part to do with the action of the big strings just being higher, because they are sitting higher in the nut and bridge grooves. A higher action in and of itself is going to increase fullness and sustain. Just as an aside.
Anyhoo.