gold

I've been a vegetarian since 1969 and vegan for the last 3 years now and I don't own leather other than my tenor sax pads. I'd love to become totally leather free. I've seen gold pads mentioned somewhere in the past and was wondering if any of you have any experience with them.

So I'm in the market for a new sax, and I'm looking at the Yamaha YAS 62III. There is a silver model (which i really like) and a normal gold lacquer version. I was wondering what the difference in sound would be vs the two. I'm a classical player too.