I've used two pairs of the Nevaton MCE 400 by now and one pair was dead on, my current pair is within a couple of db's from each other. I personally like the cable that is permanently attached to the mics, it seems low profile enough and doesn't get tangled up too bad. I use mine straight in with a microtracker/no battery box and and Fr2Le and they work great with both.
Since there aren't a lot of users of these mics I am personally excited to hear other people's experiences, whether good or not so good.
Richard, If you aren't happy with your mics, perhaps you could send them back to nevaton, and have new xlr adapters installed, then you could sell them in the yardsale. It's too bad the caps weren't more matched, but I don't think that was the company's intention with these mics, although I'm not sure what the intended market was with using the full size xlr connector. Either way the taping community lucked out when these things were discoverd, they sound great.