Let’s compare string gauges from 8 to 12 and how they affect tone and playability, with surprising results. A must-watch when changing your strings!
https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/what-string-gauge-should-we-use-hts-0005
link is here:
https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/what-string-gauge-should-we-use-hts-0005
This was just asked a little differently yesterday in Community 
Time to go listen to the lesson. 
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Not a whole lot of difference detected between 8, 9, 10………. 11, 12 sounded crappy.
After struggling to get full-tone bends to sound right with 9s, I’m transitioning to 7s. It’s opening up a whole new world. I don’t think I’ll be going back. I don’t mind playing lighter as Justin suggested; that’s what the amp is for.
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I too was playing 10s before. I switched from D’Addario 10-46 to 9-46 and all I noticed is that bending is easier on my fingers and more fun to do. I really like the 9-46, skinny top / heavy bottom strings and will use them going forward.
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My first electric guitar was delivered with 9’s. I quickly changed to 10’s because I was used to playing acoustics and using more finger pressure on the frets, which made the notes sharp. I should perhaps also mention it was a short scale which probably made it worse. Now I have a longer scale guitar, maybe I might experiment with 9’s.
Can’t wait for Justin to repeat the experiment on an acoustic.
On my acoustic, I like the feel of thicker strings, but I can’t say I can tel much of a tone difference. 13s are too much for me, I like 12s, although ideally with an 11 or 11.5 high e.
This may simply be a side effect of also playing nylon string guitar and liking the feel of the nylon strings, which are much thicker, but also soft and having much less tension.
I started on 9s, then had a long period on 10s… and for the last many years (5y+) I landed on 9.5s as the perfect middle ground for electric playing. In standard E tuning. That’s my current default string gauge for live playing.
However, I might be on the edge of doing a radical change once again. I enrolled in a guitar course called “Effortless Shred”, and the teacher on that course made the argument that most/many of the shredders who appears to be playing fast with very little effort were using very light strings. Even 8s, and sometimes even in Eb tuning.
He made a heavy suggestion that for the course material, if possible, we should at least give that a chance. Being open-minded, I decided on a specific guitar I wanted to use for this course that I knew I could “set aside” and not need for live playing - and installed 8.5s on it (so not ALL the way down to 8s, as suggested, but a big step down for me anyway).
I went into this “experiment” fully expecting to hate it, and to have problems with intonation on bends after years and years of playing heavier strings. But I have to say - I actually really, really enjoy the feel of playing super light strings!?! Once you get used to it you realize it gives you full control over even the smallest details of how you want your phrasing to sound. You can effortlessly “play around” with the bends in term of timing, speed etc. Pretty cool stuff!
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I started the beginner’s course on a Yamaha Pacifica with Ernie Ball Slinky 7s (electric) as advised by a friendly busker. They were great for my old hands which after a few years of arthritis had grown weak through under-use. No finger pain either, not a bit.
After a few months I noticed that I was finding them a little too soft. I’d accidentally push the low E right over the edge of the fretboard and I didn’t get a lot of tactile feedback; maybe I was getting stronger and/or the callouses were thickening?
I tried D’Addario nines, which were ok. They fixed the ‘feeling’ problem anyway and seemed to sound better but they were a different brand too so the comparison wasn’t completely fair.
Once again, after a while, and after seeing Beato’s youtube video on string gauges, I wondered whether going up two steps was making life unnecessarily hard for my fingertips. I was finding the D’Addario windings a bit coarse and my fingers would stick. Next time a change was due I tried Ernie Ball 8s and for me they were my Goldilocks strings; not too thin, not too thick and slinky!
Goldilocks or not, I may well experiment again next time it’s time to buy strings. It seems to change everything and it’s cheaper than buying another instrument.
My acoustic Jim Dandy is strung with Ernie Ball Earthwood 10s rather than the 12’s that it came with a month or so ago. At the moment they are just right for me too.
Changing strings is easy and cheap fun so why not experiment and see what happens? I’m reading posts from lots of people like @Kasper above who have been pleasantly surprised.
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9’s on my BMG Red Special and my Strat. 10’s on my Les Paul. I read that they feel about the same as the LP scale length is shorter. When I replace the strings on the Les Paul I will try 9’s