No probs THX

The image above didnt have any HDR, final gather or anything, it was just a simple 3 point lighting set up, 2 x Area lights and a spot light just to evaluate the colour and the scattering effect.

The image below is rendered just with a HDR image, as described on the pic the one on the left has SSS on and the one on the right has it switched off, all the weightings set to 0 except the diffuse weight thats set to 1 (so just the colour map shows).

As you can see the one with the SSS is absorbing the light and scattering it between its layers, giving the reddish tinge on the upper right edge, (you can see it beter in the above image as theres a back spotlight there making it absorb and scatter more).

I decided to have a play with spheres to get a ball park as the render times only a few seconds compared with a few mins when the final characers mapped and done.