best is to get 5k-10k or so in your debit acct, or have a similar or higher limit credit card or partner with one----then lots of good shops will ship u 2 at a time, and u get to test it all in your actual environment...much better!!!!!
if u dont have that kind of scratch, you're not really ready to shop yet, are ya?
i'm sure there are several loaded studios you could rent for a day, then rent anything they dont have
finally, there are shootouts often around LA, just keep an eye here for many of them.
also, lots of threads here, and elsewhere, and some good CD collections of shootouts are available
and does vintage king have an LA showroom? shrug
hell, if all else fails, go rent the smallest cheapest room at Blackbird Studios in Nashville (where they also have a MASSIVE rental collection of virtuall EVERYTHING....rent it for the shortest time you can possibly need...be totally prepared to do all your tests quicky and accurately, have media to record and take home with you, do it, get done, get out...can't be too awful expensive, since they can rent and roll right to ya, there on premises anything you could want,
good luck...best is just do the home trial thing, several shops do it now.
one last thing...at one point, it was more cost and time effective for me to fly from Texas to Florida for an afternoon appointment and test things at Atlas Pro Audio....may be even able to do so at Mercenary now, dunno....they referred me to Atlas at the time, cuz they had no studio....and if there were some off hours, they would let me try pretty much anything...however, the underlying facts was, I had the money to buy the items I wanted to make final decisions "About""" so, I was not just trying stuff for "future reference...." I was rdy to buy....anyhooooo....one of those methods should getcha there