Magnepan 1.7 too bright, HELP

I agree with Djcxxx. For example, if the bass is not right, that may cause them to sound too bright. Make what you have work to the best of its ability before you spend any money.

Use 1.5 ohm resistors.

If you read all of the string, and know Maggies, the problem starts with the amp. Positioning et al is not going to change the fact that there's not enough juice to run the panels, and the other gear tends to brightness anyway.

Just wasting time.

There is a lot of good advice and good ideas here. The take home message is that most of what you have may not be the best match with the 1.7's.

I'm with Macdadtexas on the importance of good clean power. I use CAD 500 MB's with my Maggies. Unfortunately you are not going to spring 3-4K on an amp right now. You are trying to work on the cheap, so here is my hierarchy using mostly suggestions from the threads. Buy used to save money. Each one of these will help.
1) < $200 Deaden the corners, floor to ceiling. Glue Auralex panels to blue insulation pannels. You may be very surprised.
2) < $500 Promethius TVC volume control. I use a Promethius Ref 4 with my Maggies. You will want to watch the length of your IC's and use an amp with a reasonably high input impedence if possible.
3) < $700 I like the Eastern Electric DAC suggestion above. I've had Denon players with Maggies before and they were not a good match.
4) As Macdadtexas points out, you can do all of the above and still not completely fix the problem. But it sounds like you may need to wait a while before you can really get an amp that will do justice to the maggies. Just keep in mind that you are going to need to get the amp replaced at some point.

Your problem is simple,you have Ferrari speakers running on WalMart tires.Providing you have the financial resources you most definitely should replace the source and the amp.Cable upgrades will help but improvements will be less than dramatic.
I agree with others that have recommended room treatments.
I've owned several Magnepan speakers and I can provide you with some recommendations for equipment upgrades if you care to flip me a pm.