the other day one of the guys in my shop and i did a real informal "shoot out" using a bunch of mics we had around the shop->avalon 737->pro tools. i say it was informal because we literally mic'ed an electric guitar, unamplified as our source. obviously it was not the right way to do this test. if we have some downtime this week, we'll mic up that mesa duel rectum-fire rig, plus a fender twin and run a "real" test. we'll do the same with an acoustic guitar, unamplified. once we do all this, i'll post them in this thread, and you guys can listen and tell me what sounds best to you. the real reason we did this the other day was to test out the new shure beta 181. we tested it against a km184, a 460, a u87, a royer 121, a 414, and a beyer 160. without giving our results, we were both surprised which we liked the most.