Yes damping pads can only help with lots of problems won't effect volume. Strange how adding fill effectively increases the perceived volume. Something to do with slowing speed of sound or something, not sure. Play around with the fill amount with your new mic and you should get darn good sound. As far as the Kapok dust just put cloth around driver basket. Seen it in commercial design when rock wool was used. Looks like stretchy panty hose material. The voil coil will not clog up with all that dust when cranking that bad boy up. Imagine it sounds real good at high spl.
Better than anything you could buy in what caliber of design. Fun too.