Before I let it go, this thought came to mind as a better way to make the point on the small mics and bass thing-
It would be trivial to build a cheap omni microphone which senses down to zero Hz, outputting DC at that point. A tiny sensor on an electronic barometer chip does so for pennies. There is no market for one and it would be problematic anyway. You'd get large DC offsets with any atmospheric pressure changes!
What is easily possible and what is available are two different things often only tangentially related.
Tapers get the table scraps of the larger recording gear manufacturing world. Naks are a good example of mics that happen to be rather well suited to recording as many here at TS do it. Fortunately mics generally intended for other applications can still do a good job, and we can further manipulate things to get the results we want from them. That's why I'm actually less concerned with the raw sound from any microphone than how malleable that sound is to my manipulation via EQ or whatever - how easily can I get it to do what I want - and that aspect does seem to be directly correlated with mic quality in my experience.
That's not to say I dismiss the choice of mics based entirely on their raw sound so that EQ needn't be applied. I totally get that and it's super valuable to someone who doesn't want to have to do that work. It is perhaps the most important gear selection criteria. It's just that the biggest factor influencing peoples impression of the raw microphone sound is far and away frequency response*, and because I'm almost always going to EQ my recordings regardless, that aspect no longer becomes the most important factor in choosing between micss. So the convenience of not having to EQ some recordings in order to be totally happy with them isn't the most valuable to me. *(actually a somewhat more complicated combination of the on-axis and off-axis responses)
So when many tapers get to the point were they are investing in quality mics, they are super intent on the native raw sound differences between the top contenders. It's small details in the sound heard which become the critical thing in choosing between Schopes vs DPA, Gefell, Neuman, or whatever. And that's as it should be.
I've found that mics from any of those top manufacturers allow me to get what I want from them with the manipulation I'm going to be ding to the recording anyway. So things other than raw response become more important deciding factors, including options, price, powering, weather resistance, etc.
I can't say the same for lesser mics, which don't let me achieve the same quality regardless of my manipulations, and that, rather that native sound or cost is essentially why I categorize them as "lesser" rather than "greater".
That said, and all else being equal, the mk22 is my favorite Schoeps cap sound wise, along with the 4015 on the DPA side. But the differences in sound at that level of quality is dominated by pickup pattern above most everything else, if a super/hyper is needed that's more important, in that case the MG21 is my top cap (mk41 a close second)
Worse than the table scraps mic situation are the recorders and other gear. Mics are at least single-aspect elements for the most part, where good general-purpose excellence allows them to be adapted to widely diverse applications. But I bet we'd all redesign recorders far differently if we could for our specific use. I know I would!