Thanks for the replies, gang - much appreciated!!
I have been bouncing back and forth between sitting and standing and I'm still on the fence to which I like best. I like the freedom of standing, and can be quite the ham with dancing around. When standing I use a concert snare stand to get the height needed for the snare drum and use the floor tom much less. Of course I max the floor tom legs out but it still a good amount lower than the snare. I guess I would need to find some of those extended floor tom legs that I once seen on a Slim Jim Phantom give away kit for some contest. Obviously when standing I can't use the foot pedal on a hi hat stand as I need that left foot to balance on. The only thing that worries me about standing is that my 50 year old knees might disagree with me in time from playing this way all the time - ha.
When playing seated is when I use more of the floor tom. I admit that the hi hat accents on two and four would be nice, as well as having that limb free and not working - which is why I am considering a remote pedal for them.
I've also thought quite a bit about using the snare rim in place of the hats, which I think would work nicely for many rockabilly tunes, but then I'm sure I would miss them for other genres. If I were doing solely rockabilly then I think it would be a no-brainer. I have always been a minimalist so I like this idea. I think I'm seeing two separate kits in the near future - one standing and one sitting
Correct, in this current setup the hats are at about 3:00 - just on the right side of the kick where the ride cymbal commonly goes. The ride cymbal is just above the snare at the 12:00 position. However, I did just have a playing session and I reversed the two. Thus, hats at the 12:00 position and the ride at 3:00. This worked as well. I still preferred playing the hats this way rather than crossing over the snare hand. I can see it would be easier using a remote pedal for the hats this way as they are much closer to the left foot this way. My ride cymbal stand is a straight stand so I know I can get the ride closer yet with a boom. Seeing how I have no toms up I can get that ride cymbal right in there