There is nothing wrong with running a thicker head gasket and you dont need head studs . I do run arp head studs in my motor but just so that im not pulling on the threads in the block every time i take the head off (i change shit alot lol) not to hold the head down . If your running over ten pounds of boost then yea head studs would be a nice thing to have . Running all motor stock head bolts are fine just make sure they are tourqed properly. Everybody tends to want to buy all this stuff so that they can say i have all this in my build when alot of it doesnt make the motor any faster and is not needed in certain builds. Also rememmber guys more compression does not mean more hp always.We actually cut our pistons to get to 12.2 compression . I mean why didnt we run 13.1 or higher ? Scottie said he could tune 13.1 on pump gas but alot of people have actualy made more power going from 13.1 to 12.1 on pump gas so we choose a happy medium . As it is now our cranking pressure is right were it needs to be so if we would have went 13.1 we would have lost power or at the very least had to do alot of cam degreeing to find it . Its alot more tricky to make big hp on na set ups . Alot depends on what cams you are running and weither they bleed off cranking pressure as to weither you can run higher compression. if you stay around 12.1 you should be ok. Anything higher then that you need to do alot of research. Also if your trying to run a thicker head gasket to get down to 12.5 you have a hell of a dome on your pistons meaning piston to valve and valve to valve clearance should be checked this is not a motor you just threw together and hope for the best you need to check everything.