First of all, I have little experience cutting vocals to tape, so take my advice for what it is.
However, I do think that outboard compression is one of the keys to get that space around a signal and on the other hand, really gel into the track. It's almost like a paradox, but somehow it's there. I agree that plugins, how well they may do there job in some circumstances, only take away from getting that dimensional quality into a vocal or other instrument.
Since a year or two I don't let a plug in touch the vocal (accept when tuning is necessary
) and only use outboard and I'm probably not telling you anything new here, but it does add up.
On the CL1B, I really like it on vocals, graps in a nice way.
Good luck,
Dirk