hi, i`m about to purchase a yamaha yss875 custom soprano and saw that i had the option to order it in a gold-plated version. after much scanning of various articles on the web, along with various conflicting points of view as to what gold-plating actually does to the tone quality of a sax, i`ve decided to post my query here. if possible, could u guys enlighten me as to what the effects of gold-plating are? i`m considering between a standard gold-lacquer and gold-plating, so feel free to provide an opinion as to what you would yourself choose. last bits of questions (sorry for the bother), is the coloration of gold-plating darker than standard yamaha gold-lacquer and what are the wearing effects of a gold-plated instrument? (it doesn`t tarnish from what i read, and it isn`t lacquer, so how does it actually wear? or does it even?) thanks a whole bunch!

The normal response, which varies of course, is that Gold plating gives the horn a darker sound than lacquer and silver plating. In a soprano I, myself, prefer this (though I don`t own a gold plated soprano) - I opted for the darker sounding mouthpieces.

Wear is for all practicality probably less then lacquer - gold is soft isn`t it ??
lacquer is designed to be longer lasting (on good quality horns). Silver could be solid silver or silver plate. Some come with lac over the silver to minimize tarnishing.

But, for flexibility, I opted for a lacquered soprano and then vary the mouthpieces to get a particular sound I wanted. But, my horn didn`t have that gold plated option .....