My last two, new guitars have come setup with extra light guage strings and I think I prefer them to the EXL110s I've been stringing my guitars with forever now.
Is that crazy?
If that's crazy, then I'm crazy too.
Have been pretty much playing 10's since 1980, there has been the few times were I went to 9's or 11;s but always came home to 10's.
BTW more of a Gibson guy, but do have some Ibanez's with the same scale length as Fender.
But then I got my first Fender (Strat) in 2013, it came with 9's and the first thing I did was throw some 10's on there, love the guitar but there were times I just felt I was missing something, though about trying 9's again from time to time, and then just dismissed it.
Then a few years later I got a Tele, like all Fenders (to my knowledge) came with 9's, so I left the store with the Tele and a few sets of 9's. Went home and put a set on the Strat did the setup. For whatever reason I just liked the guitar better, it wasn't that it sounded different or, easier to bend strings or, any like that. Weird as it sounds, "it just felt right". I never fought wit the 10's on the Strat, hell my acoustics's have 13's. ha ha
So for a brief time I tried 9's on my Les Paul's after a few weeks went back to 10's, wasn't hitting chords out of tune or anything like that but didn't like the overall feel.
The Ibanez guitars I switched them back to 9's also, kind of liked it a little better but although the same scale length as the Fenders, didn't affect me the same way. On those guitars 9, 10s whatever would have been fine. But those guitars had a difference from the Gibson's and fenders. Floating trems.