Copper, silver, or gold MC cartridge coils?

Dear @edgewear :  You are rigth the Colibri samples sound a little different in between.
I owned wood/plastic body models and cooper/Gold ones I never had the opportunity to listen the platinum one.

My preference with the Colibri go to the low output 0.22mv cooper wire and old really ligth black plastic body: the best Colibri I listened everywhere and as you could agree top performer from all frequency range with a little " strong " character in the high freq. where is very demanding on VTA/VTF, additional very good tracker.

Unfortunatelly the other Colibri samples I owned/listened all were not 0.22mv output but higher and this cartridge characteristic has influence in what we listen to.
In the latest VDH designs ( say from two years now ) he choosed for way high output levels that goes even over0.7mv and the ones I heard it are good but nothing that can compare with the true LOMC VDH samples.

Koetsu is another case where I own or owned vintage models of Rosewood, Onyx and even one named silver till I finished with the platinum ones.
Like with the Colibri no two vintage same model Koetsu samples performs the same and seems to me tghat only when they switch to the platinum models Koetsu really started to takes its work truly " seriously " to achieve the audiophile sound needs.
Question is : quality levels changed because the platinum or because a better overall excecution to the cartridge design?, I think that both things but perhaps more inclined to a better overall cartridge design and cartridge QC through manufacture it.

Lyra is another example about the use of platinum in its Olympos model that was a departure from the Lyra cartridge signature kind of sound.
I had the opportunity to listen in deep to the Olympos mounted in a Schroeder tonearm, SP10MK3, MBL speakers, top SS phonolinepreamp, etc, etc. and I have to say that performs really good but a little in the warm side that's unfortunatelly is not what goes with my priorities but J.Carr  posted somewhere that more or less that was a characteristic of that model against the other more " dynamic/agressive models as the Titan i of those times.

All these first hand experiences along the different examples I posted here tells me that it's the overall design and quality level excecution to that design what really matters more than the kind of of wire used in the coils even I posted that the coils wiring shapes could be more important than the wire and this only a cartridge designer can tell us.

Btw, Allaerts use gold wire and the performance of its top models are first rate ( I owned ) however a little soft at the highs. As with silver and cooper wire that exist different quality levels maybe is the same with gold but I don't know for sure.

Lewm for me a phono cartridge item is way different than a SUT and has no relationship on the topic of this thread. What could be true for a SUT not necessary is true for a phono cartridge. I think that only gentlemans like JC or VDH can tell us all about.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R. 

@rauliruegas  vdHul used platinum wire for the coils in a short lived series of the Colibri (discontinued as consistent high quality platinum wire apparently was no longer available).
 
As for Koetsu and Lyra, I always understood that they use(d) platinum for the magnets. Apparently these are also rare, as Lyra needs a donor cartridge with such magnet to build a new one. Then again, Koetsu seems to have no trouble sourcing platinum magnets for their gemstone models. In any case, this is quite a different application of the material, likely to yield different sonic benefits.

I may be wrong, but as far as I know there's never been a cartridge that used platinum for both the coils AND the magnets. Would be an interesting beast.....

I wonder why nobody plays around with the wiring of MM or MI cartridges. Higher voltage maybe wire has less effect?

They do actually, LC-OFC versus PC-OCC.
Grace and Audio-Technica made different versions.   

Dear @edgewear : Yes you are rigth because Lyra asked for the Parnassus sample to build the Olympos and yes too with the Koetsu that does not needs a donor cartridge.

Yes, different application sonic benefits.

R.

Dear @mijostyn : I think that the more expensive high output ( MM/MI ) cartridges are the ones coming from SoundSmith and PL never says he is using silver or gold wire in the coils but cooper.

No singler vintage HO MM/MI use silver wire in its coils. The rule is cooper as with LOMC ones too .

Some LOMC , maybe by marketing issue, use silver or gold wire but this is not " normal " and perhaps only a marketing hype to ask higher prices for it. Only the manufacturers can tell us the true behind their choosed coils wire types.
R.