slow(er) SQL performance

Let me start this off by saying i am not a SQL guy. We have an application that hits a SQL database set up by the company whose software we use. We connect to 5 very small databases (total 20 g/b) on a SQL standard 2012 install on a windows server 2012 r2. when i run the application it can take up to 30 seconds to pull up 77k lines. From reading around that seems like a long time for that little data. Any suggestions? I have already moved the LDF and MDF to their own SSD  to see if that helped with speed but it made a marginal difference.