agree with Mario - for most of us the amount of distortion used was unlike our normal playing techniques. and it's also unlike Clapton, Santana and Knopfler so its a very limited bunch of sounds.

the only player i remember reputed to use 8s in the 60s was James Burton on a tele. and his sound was clean.

I remember in the 60s there were no ultra lights until later. Those of us that played in local bands got our advice from the top line acts we supported which is where we found out about using a top g banjo string as top e and moving all the other strings over one slot to make a set of ultra lights. even then we didn't use the level of distortion in the video. what we got was a sweet valve compression and gentle overdrive when we turned things up. we used to control the overdrive from the guitar volume control. Jeff Beck was the master at that. set the amp at max and turn the volume on the guitar down to clean up the sound then up for a solo.

and that was in the days just after the first strats arrived in the UK with 13s on.

on the shadows final tour, hank marvin used two strats - one with heavier strings to recreate the sound of some of their earlier numbers.

i also remember arlen roth playing for simon and garfunkel insisting that 10s was the best sound on a strat as opposed to 9s.

and that's another point - gibson scale length is 24.75 on a les paul as opposed to a strat at 25.5 so 10s on a gibson are like 9s on a strat (or just about)

an interesting video but not terribly helpful if you play a different style or a different guitar.

and just as an aside, to recreate the sound of Cliff Gallup from Gene Vincent's blue caps, Jeff Beck couldn't get the sound he wanted till he changed to tape wounds strings.

so what do i use? 9s on my strat clone, 11s for playing rhthym on my ES330 clone (and with the humbuckers coil tapped) and 12s on my Martin d35.

guitarhacker has it right!