I like Rock Auto, but I've never ordered a crate motor from them. (Always Summit or Jegs) I'll keep them in mind though!
Quieting a kit is always going to be hard. I've heard of people putting R-30 insulation in the walls of their practice shed and then installing drywall with anechoic foam panels over the top and it *still* being too loud! (Plus that acoustic wedge foam stuff is expensive as hell.) The mesh heads are a good idea though. Do they change the feel of the kit a lot?
I played drums for a year when I was in band (started on the alto sax the first year and then switched to drums the second year because I thought it would be easier). Never got very good at either one! But my younger son also played drums when he was in band, so we got him a starter kit and let him flail on that for a few years. I got a chance to re-live my younger years by playing on his kit, and I'll admit it was fun (even though I sucked at it).
Is that because Spaghetti doesn't have a "live" control mode? Would that be something you could add? Thinking you could map a small list of frames to an array and then trigger them in order based on a microphone input... Or maybe just go the standard route and map a bunch of frames (or cues) to the keyboard and then use a software keyboard emulator to trigger cues based on whatever external input you wanted. (This could be midi, if you wanted to spend the coin on a bunch of drum sensors, or a home-made TTL input circuit that you hack together yourself.)
I gotta say though - the idea of a drummer controlling a laser show in real time sounds kinda cool to me...
Would need some tweaking though, because most drummers are banging the shit out of their kit, and you wouldn't want to be cycling through cues at that speed.