Which speakers did you find bright, fatiguing or just disappointing in some way?

@whipsaw 

You still havent answered what reason i would have to be dishonest. You have nothing to support your allegations.

Of the many archived posts relating to the subject speaker, the "bright and harsh" complaint is almost never found

and i have already told you why that could be. Johnson may have had any negative posts deleted at his request as he did with mine. You admitted this is what he did with my posts so you dont know if it had happened on other occasions. Johnson was an active forum user here and on other forums and any posts that related to his speakers would attract his attention. I recall that any time something negative was posted, a handful of his followers would show up on the forum. I suspect Johnson may have been contacting these followers and asking them to post positive remarks to counteract any negative ones. This happened on various forums.

The specific criticism is very uncommon, hence the logical question of whether or not the problem may have been related to something other than the speakers themselves.

Nonsense. You wouldn't know how common it was unless you knew how many people had listened to GMA and out of those what percentage found them to sound bright and edgy. I have also found that most of the GMA  supporters were believers in Johnsons theories on time coherence. Given that to date this idea has never been found to be important or audible it diminishes the credibility of their opinion about how the speaker sounds. 

I have also told you several factors that caused it to be bright. You have failed to address these factors and put the blame somewhere else even though the reasons I gave were the most obvious explanation.

You have unfortunately lost the argument now. 

Any speaker made after 1990 that has been with soundstaging and air as a main criterion is all of the things you want to avoid.

@aewarren I remember SpeakerLab. And I remember as a teen the pair of DAS6 that me and a friend moved out of my pops shop and back to the apt to set up in my room. He was not happy at first but never took them back or really said much about them. I had those for quite some time, pretty decent speaker for $0!

As for the original question, Klipsch have always been bright and meh to my ears for the most part. Various JBL designs, Meridian, Martin Logan (1998, 20005-2010), were all on the brighter side of things and just didn’t do it for me.

I’ve managed to get a hold of a pair of speakers that I can’t describe as being dull, bright, boring, unexciting, lethargic, or simply lacking, to my ears. I’m mulling over inserting a tube based pre-amp into the signal chain, but that’s just to see if I like that sound in my setup. Aside from that, I enjoy spending my spare time finding new music to listen to and not obsessing over "am I hearing enough detail" "is the sound edgy",etc.

I’m near Santa Clara CA. I need to check out a retailer and hear some stuff. Any recommendations?

I would have to say B&W. I went and auditioned the CDM1NT back in the day and thought they were tremendous! I bought them on the spot. However after extended periods of listening my ears would ring (yes I must confess I do like to listen at louder levels). When a fellow enthusiast directed me to Dynaudio and I listened (and sold the B&W's for the Danes) it was only then I realized the B&W's were on the bright side in comparison to Dynaudio. This was 20 years ago mind you...

I had to sell off all my gear during my divorce and have been out of the game for 20 years. But at least now getting back in I knew which speakers to buy. So I went with Dynaudio Excite. Weirdly I was questioning everything I remembered as I found the Excites to be a bit on the bright side. Still had that tremendous soundstage and detail that I remember with the Audience line, but now with a bit of harshness...Ended up selling the Excites for Evoke and I'm back in Nirvana :)

@kenjit 

If self-parody were an art form, your work would be in high demand.