Reply To: Silver Strings
Solid silver and solid gold are both far, far too soft to make guitar strings out of. They need to have quite a bit of tensile strength. A gold “E” string would snap as soon you tried to tune it up to pitch. Silver is harder than gold but I’m pretty sure the result would be the same.
Nylon classical guitar string sets often have the wrapped lower ones wrapped with silver wire (or at least wire plated silver; I’m not 100% sure). As a soft metal it feels somewhat softer on the fingertips than steel and doesn’t wear the frets, and also makes the tone a little duller (less metallic) to better match the nylon. Some kind of gold or silver plating on fiddle strings would probably make the tone softer (less shrill).
Platinum is quite a hard metal. An entire flute made out of platinum would probably be very resonant and bright, but also _extremely_ expensive. More likely, you’d see platinum plating, at least on the parts that you put your mouth and fingers on, which should make them last pretty much forever (impervious to skin oils, corrosion, etc).