B&W 703 - How to tame the highs?

About six months ago I got some B & W Nautilus 800s through an Audiogon seller. The seller was using an old Mark Levinson 333.5. The highs were way too piercing for my taste. I contacted a local seller, who recommend a high-end Candian amplifier. Again the sound was too bright and harsh. After reviewing an article in the Ablsolute Sound, I decided to give the McIntoshes a whirl. The result: audio nirvana. I am now blessed with sound that continues to bring me great pleasure. From my own personal experience, I suspect your problem may be in your electronics. Perhaps you should be checking out other equipment.

Are these new speakers? If so they will require a certain
amount of time to break in. My Sig 805's were a bit
harsh at first too. Another thing to look at would be
your speaker cables and interconnects. Try swapping them
and see how that affects things.

Good luck
Cmach

I am using Cary/AES Six Pacs and Cary/AES DJH sig preamp and a Jolida cd player. Any other ideas?

Some very nice equipment. Try room treatments and/or cables? IMHO, if that doesn't work you might look at different speakers. I find that pretty much all B&W speakers, except the Diamond series are bright. Not saying that to start a fight with B&W fans because I think B&W's do alot of things very good to excellent. Their strongest attribute in my opinion is the quality of their enclosures but, the weakest link is the metal dome tweeter. I too use to own Paradigm's (Studio 40's). They were my first taste of higher quality audio. After about 1.5 years with them I found my self listening less and less. So the hunt was on and after many trips to several audio shops I found that it was the brightness that was reducing the time listening. I now have Quad 12L's with Quad SS components. Good luck.

One word: TUBES!!!