I'm confident we'd all agree Billy Gibbons has no lack of tone despite using 8's. But that's with a pretty overdriven sound the majority of the time.

I'd say there's more difference in tone on clean electric and acoustic - but its actually pretty subtle.

I've got NYXL 11's on an electric that I'm tuning to Eb and has a shorter scale just because the Ernie Ball 9's I traditionally run, were getting really sloppy feeling at that tuning. But even tuned to E, I hear only a very slight difference in tone from the 9's.

There's more difference by adjusting pick attack, how you fret, how you do tremolo, tone settings on the amp and guitar, and pickup choice than you'll ever hear in the strings.

In the end, I believe it's way better to use strings that are comfortable than worry about the 1% difference in tone a different string produces - at least on electric.