Quote Originally Posted by haryn View Post
By shrillness, I mean it hurts your ears. But I only hear it on certain songs. What do I need to get to make these old speakers sound new again?
Much of the SHRILLNESS in the upper mids and high frequencies are in fact recordings of that era. Some were good, some were really bad. You play a recording with very pronounced excessive energy in the 1k o 6.3k range, the ALTECS are merely letting you hear everything your recordings are about.

Some EQ can help, but play a really well recorded tune through your ALTECS and see how that sounds.