Hi Scotty,
Yea I like Toms, the kits are good there. You normally get a nice Tama or Yamaha or something along those lines. To be honest, when I've been to MV in the past the kits have been awful. Generally I don't care how it sounds, but when none of the hardware works, the floor tom collapses and the heads look like a lunar landscape, it's not ideal. Frankly I can't believe they actually charge people money to use them.
The problem I was trying (and potentially failing) to describe, was just the time it takes to set up cymbal stands, cymbals, kick pedals, laptop etc. Since the stuff I'm writing for the album is quite demanding for me, it takes a while to actually get warmed up and by the time you factor in set up and pack up time (that takes approximately one hour in total), it's really not effective to at a place like Toms. Which is unfortunate cos they're a decent bunch of guys, their place is cool and they do 3 hours for 2 at certain times.
Unfortunately there's not enough space in my room to swing a cat, never mind have an electronic/mesh head kit I did once try the mesh head/DIY E-drum thing and it worked quite well with the exception of the kick drum mesh head breaking after about 1 day due to the practice being pretty double kick heavy!