The current crop of upper end JBL (and other brand) speakers does a pretty nice job of providing well made cabinets with almost believeable fake wood surfaces. As long as it remains in good shape, it's fine. When it gets old, worn, or roughed up, it's not so nice.
The pair of SVA2100s I recently got are in pretty good shape, except for the vinyl surfaces. They have lots of scratches, as few small dings, a few slightly peeled edges, and a nice, sloppy, shiny coat of black spray paint where some moron "touched them up." This was probbly to cover up the white latex paint spatters that appear on the cabs.
The idea of applying contact cement over this surface gives me night sweats, because the vinyl is likely to react to the solvents and do weird things like shrivel, bubble, and lose its structural bond. Any veneer I'd apply over this could end up a mess, even separating and coming off over time.
The thought of trying to peel the vinyl off is insane, and stripping it off will likely damage the MDF due to the chemicals required.
Painting it is absurd as long as the vinyl remains. There are so many reason why this is senseless, I won't even list them.
So, what to do? What to do?