openrivers: There have been many debates on SOTW about how a horn's finish affects its sound. I am among many who don't believe it (that finish matters) - beware of marketing hype!
You will read all sorts of claims by various manufacturers - take them all with a grain of salt.
My gold-plated R&C sounded good, but nothing above my lacquered brass sopranos, my vintage silver-plated sops, etc., etc. It is the horn and the player, not the finish (in MY opinion).
I too was caught up in the way the tipped-bell R&C looked, so I bought it, sight unseen. I liked it for a while (and received many compliments from the audiences and other players) on how it sounded. In the end, I had more difficulty with how to set the horn down when playing other instruments than any tonal advantage the horn MAY have provided. After I traded it away, some suitable stands came to market, but that wouldn't have changed my decision about to move it on.
By the way, have you ever played a Saxello? I mean the REAL Saxello - from H.N. White/King? If you had, you'd probably never refer to the R&C as a "saxello" - the modern tipped-bell sops are so far superior to the King Saxello that I wonder what marketers were thinking when they chose to call tipped-bell sopranos a "Saxello". DAVE
