Some wind instruments' keys feature bumpers at the bottom to protect material from scraping against material (and for a few other reasons). The ones on my saxophone are made from something resembling felt, while the ones on my flute are corkwood. As I have recently discovered, bumpers on saxophones can be corkwood as well (all horns I've seen so far had felt bumpers, so this came to me as a surprise).
I was wondering if there is a difference in material choice. It's obvious to me that felt would not work on flute, but seeing the state of the bumpers on my saxophone (let's just say a lot of them are no longer symmetrical) makes me wonder if I should buy a piece of cork and replace them.
With my limited knowledge, I can surmise that corkwood would better stand the test of time and deform at a much slower pace. Because of the material's elasticity (compared to felt), it would also provide a lot more resistance when playing.
Without going into subjectivity, I would like to know if one of the materials is "better" than the other and what the reasons are between choosing them (at least on saxophones), because so far I have only seen corkwood bumpers on cheap, non-professional horns.