Speakers and vacuum tube gear

Rsasso...i am not sure where you are in Vermont but if you are interested in auditioning Verity, Rockport, and Magico with both solid state (Boulder/Simaudio) or tube (ARC, Nagra, Luxman) gear, Goodwins High End in Waltham, MA (30 mins from Boston) carry all these brands. Additionally Spearit Sound (Boston) and Natural Sound (Framingham, MA) carry a wide variety of brands of speakers and electronics. Hope this helps in terms of your auditioning blues...

I've only listened to a very very small fraction of the thousands of tower speaker models ever producted, but I've yet to hear one that did not sound better with the right tube amps.

I've have never bought speakers from a solid state demo.

Merlin VSMs are about as tube friendly as they come. Basically a smooth impedance curve and highish (8 ohm or more)will make most speakers tube friendly.