I'm sure you will get a lot of answers, but here's mine.  

When I was in college in the early 1980s, I bought a small Sjoberg's
cabinetmaker's bench for the princely sum of $349.00.  It was the single most
expensive thing I'd ever purchased, except for my car, a 1975 VW Superbeetle.
The car is long gone, but I still have and use the bench.  It was their hobbiest
models and just 4 feet long.  I bought it because with the top removed I could
fit it into the Superbeetle, and it was nice enough looking that was not
objectionable looking to my girlfriend/fiancée/first wife/ex-wife, who let me
keep it in our studio apartment living room area.

This bench has a Scandinavian style shoulder vise and a proper tail vise, both
with wooden screws.  Sjoberg has abandoned the design since which is too bad.
The bench is a little small for cabinetmaking, and I always dreamed of making
the larger Tage Frid or Frank Klaus versions, but never have.  I am a hobbiest,
but I've built housefuls of furniture, trim molding and other small and not so
small projects on the bench over the last 35 or so years.  So on to the vises.

Cast my vote for the tail vise.  I use it constantly.  Far more than the
shoulder vise.  It's probably a good exercise to imagine building a small
project and how you would hold the workpieces as you go.  First off,
dimensioning stock- the tail vise makes clamping boards for scrubbing, and
planing, in my case up to about 52 inches, between the dogs easy.  When face-
planing I like the stock held firm, rather than just using a stop, so the tail
vise is a big help there.

It's useful for edge jointing narrow stock as well, just set on edge between the
dogs.  I made a long, simple shooting board for edge jointing that's held
between the dogs and uses the bench top itself as a bed for a jointer.  Makes
joining panels for doors and such a snap.

It's also useful for disassembling face frames and the like, by reversing the
dogs and applying force against the M&T joint while you apply heat or steam or
muscle.

Of course everything I do with it can be done in other ways, it's a matter of
work habits and the capabilities of whatever vise you choose.  Much of what I
use the tail vise for could be done with a wagon vise, and if I were to build a
new bench, I would consider one.  The shoulder vise does sag a bit now (so do I)
and the gap formed when it is opened allows thin stock to spring a bit which
makes starting a plane tricky.  A wagon vise would fix that.

There are a thousand ways to use the vise faces too.  I've never lined mine with
leather as seems to be the current trend and they are worn and lined with a
lifetime's use (like me).

I really cannot imagine what, more than this, I would use an end vise for, given
the way this bench has formed my amateur capabilities, maybe holding panels or
planing small stock at a right angle to the bench (feels wrong).  Undoubtedly
they're useful, but not in ways that are evident to me.  Of course much of what
I do could be done with the forward dog of an end vise, but I'd worry about it
racking all the time.

Good luck with the decision!

Best Regards,

David Carroll

Sent from my iPad