Well, after many months of dicking around, I finally got around to checking out some of the string gauges suggested by Wayne 7 and his co-horts. He described how if you had consistent string tension throughout all 7 strings, that it could vastly improve playability and tone. I have to say HE IS CORRECT.
I never really understood how much of a difference this could be, until I tried it. I implore all of you to give it a shot. You guys using unbalanced gauges (such as 10-56, or worst of all those GHS sets where the E string is .052 and the B is .060... makes NOOO sense) seriously need to try this. I was happy before but now I can't see how I ever tolerated things before.
On my 25.5 Ibanez K7-FB, I put on 9-12-16-24-32-44-60 and tuned it to Bb/Eb/Ab/Db/Gb/Bb/Eb. Now, everything is so balanced, and it plays even more effortless than before. I bought that set hoping to tune to A but it was a disaster, way too floppy, with Bb tuning the trem angle evened out perfectly flat, and the tension was just right... easy bends but still very firm. I plan on checking out another set for an A tuning. Probably the 10-66 set.
Kudos to Wayne 7 and the rest for the info. For the record I'm going by the gauges listed in
this thread.