Moving from cone speakers to a set of Apogee Duetta Signature speakers has shown me that there is value to be found in old equipment, for sure. There is certainly more than one way to skin this cat ... I went for the high power SS route with lots of tubes in front of it.
System strengths: natural timbre, musical, transparent with amazing soundstaging, dynamic, good PRAT, no fatigue from CD or vinyl. This is as good as I've heard in many rooms.
They are still great speakers. Had mine set up this Spring but as my room is only 13' wide I moved out my 2 REL Stadium subs before setting them up. Had great bass and never felt I needed the subs. My CJ 350 was very good, something like 600 watts into 4 ohms; but my Meridian 605s [150 watts] also did well. My new room is going to be about a foot wider but 13' shorter, 22' vs 35' so I will probably continue with the Spendor SP1s with the RELs.