Making it brighter?

[Forgetful Jedi Knight]

Hello everyone.
I've completed construction on my saber electronics, I just need to fine tune everything.
What I'm working with:
Red-orange Luxeon LED http://www.luxeonstar.com/Red-Orange...r-01-h2070.htm with collimator lense
Obi-Wan Feel the Force soundboard
The cheaper speaker from TCSS (called the 'premium speaker')
6 AAA batteries (so 9 volt, if I'm adding correctly)
4.7 ohm 5w resister, on the negative wire of the LED
My problems are twofold:
The LED only lights up approximately 5-6 inches of the blade (which is a thick walled trans white). The rest is very pale. I've tried putting a few wraps of clear cellophane in the blade, but that only made the whole thing dimmer. Would it be safe to remove the resister, or would I risk burning my LED?
My second problem is the speaker. Is 9v too much for it? It sounds very odd, getting louder and softer at weird intervals. It sounds stressed to me, which is one reason I'm thinking of taking the resister from the LED, so I can put it on the speaker to make it sound better.
Thanks for reading, and I welcome suggestions and advice. If there is anything unclear about my construction please ask.

If you remove the resistor, you would probably fry the LED.

As for the rest, now that I have seen which board you are using, I don't know much about the economy boards, but I would *guess* that unless they originally could take 6AAA batteries, you could be giving it too much voltage. Also standard batteries doesn't have a reliable discharge rate (as opposed to Li-ion batteries) so that could be a lot of your issue as well. I'll wait until some others with "Econo board" experience chime in here.