Kangaroo Pads - Why Aren't they Bouncier?

I recently finished my first overhaul of a saxophone with kangaroo skin pads. The pads are popular because of the durability of the skin and a reputation for not getting sticky. Having worked with them pretty intensely for the past few days as I strove to perfectly seal every tone hole on the instrument, I can say that I like them, and I think they're made to a slightly higher standard than standard Ferree's sax pads. As for whether they're worth the astronomical price, I can't say. If they're still working hard in 10 years, most definitely. If they get the player a little more action because of how cool they look, absolutely. They're great, but maybe not three times as great as typical pads (however one would measure that). That being said, I was working with soprano sax pads, which are obviously pretty small and so have some weird nuances. It seems like the smaller a sax pad gets, the more likely it is to have a slightly rounded face instead of a flat one. Since leather can't be folded at a perfect 90 degree angle, there's always a curved transition area between the face of the pad and the side, where the leather folds up against the corner of the felt. On small pads, there's less space between the center of the pad and this curved transition area, and at a certain point the whole face of the pad is transition, so it more closely resembles a puffy little sphere (or perhaps even an oblate spheroid!) than a disc with a nice flat face. This is especially easy to see on 8, 9, and 10mm pads that are used for octave keys. Kangaroo skin, being evidently a little bit firmer and more rigid than the typical kid skin, exhibited this property a little more prominently than I would have liked, but as I said I was working with especially small pads, and I'd imagine it would cease to be a problem on larger pads. I can't say if the larger pads would exhibit the lumpiness sometimes found in less expensive pads, but I'll bet they don't, and that's a real selling point. 
The installation procedure was pretty much the same, except that it was easier to move the entire pad forward or backward in the cup because of their rigidity. I really liked that while I was doing the initial leveling. Later, though, I was still able to heat the cup and push up narrow sections of the pad to correct small leaks. I just had to be a little more careful with my heat control to avoid shifting the whole pad. I floated them on MusicMedic pink shellac, which they sell as amber shellac, but it's definitely pink. I don't know what makes it different from regular shellac, but it has a lower melting point, stays soft for longer, and smells positively delightful. It's my favorite shellac anymore.
I don't know when I'll next have a chance to work with kangaroo pads - we do a lot of student level instruments at the shop - but this was a good project to start with.