The Honda brake pads are between $50-$70 retail at most dealers. There is a company that manufactures brake pads for Honda called Nissin, I used to buy from an importer that sold these. The older Honda pads in the 90's even had Nissin stamped into the steel part of the pad. However, some came with shims, some did not. If you consider the cost of rotors, either to resurface or replace them due to premature warpage by cheaper pads, it saves you money in the long run.

I would have to say the performance benefits of the lighter/smaller balancer are not significant enough to risk the damage to the crank itself or the premature wear of the bearings. If you want more performance, I mean real noticeable performance, not "sounds better or I think it feels better" performance, the only options are an engine swap, supercharger, turbo, or nitrous with the complementing exhaust and air intake. I have only set up a buddies 91 CRX Si with a Jackson Racing supercharger back in 1996 and it held up for 2 years of very hard running, after 3 transmissions, 2 Si transmissions and a DX (just for kicks : different gear ratios) he decided to pull the blower and exhaust and sell the parts to a friend. The Si never had a head gasket leak, no smoke, no noises and ran perfectly when he sold it wih 69k on the engine, it had 45k when we installed it. That made a huge difference in the performance of that car. I have installed exhausts and hot air collectors (cone air filters under the hood) and none ran better than stock, they just sounded louder.

I really am not an authority on all of the aftermarket stuff out there, I know what works best for longevity and reliability. Either way, I don't believe there are greater benefits than risks for replacing a stock balancer.