Do they hold up? I think some do (and obviously some don't). I have had 3 pairs of vintage speakers: JBL 250ti, JBL L212 (with sub), and JBL18ti. The 250ti had been completely taken apart and new crossovers made. These have been my main speakers for the past few years. These 4 4way speakers and the main woofer is 14inch. The dispersion is quite a bit narrower than the Revel M106s I have in our theater and living room. They are fussier to set up (distance from the wall, amount of toe in, seating distance) but for 1 person, in that spot, I still think it sounds very good and haven't had the desire to upgrade to something else (yet). The L212 was a one of the first sub/sat systems that came out and the 2 main speakers I thought sounded good. HOwever they had not been restored and I decided I didn't want to spend my time doing restoring and repairing so sold them. The 3rd pair of was the JBL 18ti bookshelf. I compared it to a few other speakers and it didn't sound great compared to the M16 or M106, so sold it. If I had been here before going down the vintage road, I probably wouldn't have ever went with vintage speakers but in this case it worked out ok. If you aren't into repair/maintenance I wouldn't recommend it necessarily. But if you are or get a pair that someone has went through the electronics etc, they can sound very good,