[vettestr]

Your best bet would be to optimize your tune up. With help from buddies or a shop the goal of a performance tune will verify everything is working to its abilities and has the right settings for stock and then a little more.

A couple of very generic things I see causing lazy response is carb float settings wrong, low to way low initial timing settings, over carb'd with larger CFM than ideal, mechanical secondaries opening too fast, no or too little accelerator pump discharge and system vac. leaks.

No better way to learn than jump in and try. If you record what settings you have you can always go back to them. Use a hot engine spec from the late 60's muscle car as a direction.