You are quite right to point out that the officers cap badge I posted is the later version. The point I was trying to make is that the officers pattern was different, with a special configuration.
Gilding of an OR’s pattern badge indicates it is for a SNCO, or in some regiments it was arranged privately for bandsmen.
Different styles of badge of course generally relate to a specific type of headdress and, before 1897, Royal Scots WOs and SNCOs on the battalion staff wore a peaked forage cap with a gilded and silvered badge like that of the officers.
Colour Sergeants and below (no CSMs at that time) wore glengarry caps with the OR pattern badge. In most regiments (of the line) this was a standard pattern badge, but in Scottish regiments one has to be careful.
Kipling and King inadvertently caused much confusion when they referred to ‘sergeants badges’ where there is a superiority in quality (gilding, etc), but in the vast majority of cases these were the badges of battalion ‘staff’, some of whom (the more junior) were indeed just sergeants, but holding a staff appointment, e.g. Pioneer Sergeant, or Cook Sergeant. However, they were known collectively as ‘staff sergeants’ and by extension, their badges as ‘staff badges’. These latter wore superior uniform and headress in a way that company sergeants (Colour Sergeant and below) did not. See the series created by Bruce and I:
http://www.uniformology.com/FORAGE-CAPS-01.html
Some Scottish regiments do seem to have arranged superior badges for their company level sergeants (not at public expense) in a way that other regiments did not, and presumably the Royal Scots was one of them.