Well, you pick a unit like Fatso instead of a real tape I think mostly because the maintenance, not everybody is able to tweak a reel to reel on his own, and then the price.. Getting a tape is diffrent than getting a tape that works
Anyway, the Portico it's a really amazing unit, I've been testing it the past two weeks and I'm totally going to get it, the only thing is that it does tend to narrow the stereo image a lil bit, but is not a problem really, I mean is not penalizing for the unit.
For the plugin I always use McDSP, no one better even if URS is pretty close
I'm also curious about the Digi, how it is compared with McDSP?