Hi! 
I do a lot of home recording, and after being given an old quarter inch reel to reel machine, have had some good results with it. Although it can be a bit of a faff compared to digital. What I've done on some occasions is record the track digitally and then bounce down some of the instruments onto tape, and then re-record it back into the DAW for mixing and mastering.  
Personally, I've found that bass and drums sound great using this method as it does seems to add some depth and subtle compression (depending how you do it of course!), but have had less success on guitars and vocals. Alternatively, some of the tape emulation plug ins are pretty good these days such as the Waves Eddie Kramer. Nice to have the option to experiment, depending on the situation anyway.