and if you choose bigger gauges you are doing so because you desire better tone (more brightness, sharper attack, tighter envelope) and higher tension (which let's you dig in more and achieve lower action).
This myth keeps coming around here, and it doesn't jive with the Physics (yes, I studied the Physics of musical instruments and have a degree in Acoustical Physics).
On other one hand, we have people saying that bigger gauges give you brighter tone, and on the other hand we have people who gravitate to longer scale lengths so they can use skinnier strings - to avoid "tubby" tones you get with big B strings. So, bigger strings give you brighter tones and darker tones at the same time? One of these two camps has to be wrong.
It's not the mass of the string that gives you more overtones. If it were, flats (which pack more mass than a round wound, because there aren't the gaps between windings) would give more overtones than rounds, which we all know is preposterous.
So, what gives you more overtones? It's flexibility and less damping - string construction details. Less contact between windings gives you flexibility (rounds are brighter than flats). The same detail makes stainless rounds brighter than nickels - the harder metal means the windings don't dig into each other and the core as deeply as they do with nickels, so less contact = less damping = brighter strings.
Bigger strings (all else being equal) give you darker tones. You can be fooled if you're overdriving things - bigger strings will give you more output, which, if you have drive going on, means you'll get more drive, and in that situation, you will get more harmonics -
from the electronics. But without overdrive, and with other construction details the same, skinnier strings give you more harmonics/brighter sound.
