Is my ARC LS25 MkI holding back the sound?

[birdland]

The Lost Bears:

I also played around with using pair of VT100s to drive my SL3s. While I felt the sound was a little bit better, I did not think it was good enough to justify twice as many tubes.

I completely agree. I lived with my 2 VT100s for years and finally got tired of spending the money on re-tubing both of them and the multiple set of cables, extra power requirement, etc.

And yes, there are too many ugly speakers out there at the moment.