has anyone experience with the 4099 mics for instrument micing? these are supercardioid and i'm a bit reluctant to deal with proximity effect. i'm not sure if i understood their freq response properly... are they designed to use proximity effect to be flat when inside and instrument and then roll off when farther than 8 inches from source?
The 4099 are designed for close mic'ing and start to shelve down significantly below ~400Hz by design. The proximity effect of close mic'ing compensates for that response curve. WiFi Jeff uses them and says he prefers them to all other miniature directionals, but he also runs 4063's (lower voltage version of the 4061) coincidently with the 4099 on each side and mixes the two to compensate for their reduced bass sensitivity. If you are not doing something similar you are likely to find the 4099 to sound more thin and bright than you would like I'd guess. I'd love to give them a try sometime, probably the higher sensitivity hanging choral mic version which is otherwise identical except for sensitivity and mounting.. i forget the model number.
----------
On the B3s, I hear a harsher resonance up top which is more annoying and harder to deal with than the 4060s, but none of mine are wired with source resistors and have been used mostly without the grids, so I'm still withholding judgment until I add resistors and flat grids. The 4060s sound perceptually brighter to to my ear overall, but with a smoother, lower-Q emphasis than the B3’s peakier resonance. I'd really wanted to prefer the B3's simply based on the price, but the DPAs are smoother, quieter, far more transparent and natural sounding to my ear and also easier to EQ.. at least so far. All of that is significant enough to me that I’m sticking with the 4060s at this point. Others obviously feel differently- ¡Vive la différence!
----------
MMA6000 is a nice preamp, works well, sounds clean, good battery life and battery monitoring, but I had no qualms moving to using either CA-UGLYs or Niant PFAs with my 4060s (and B3s) simply because of my practical usage issues. Because of that I rarely use the MMA6000 at this point. CA-UGLY had a slightly lower perceptual noise floor when I first compared it informally to the MMA6000. I didn't hear enough difference otherwise to choose of one over the other based on sonics more than practical aspects such as size and ohter things. FWIW, Moke did the ‘accidental dremel mod’ on his MMA6000 and replaced the HPF switch with a 3.5mm TRS jack which made it easy to use it with non-microdot mics which also operate on the 5V PIP it provides.
Last year i ran two rigs with a friend at The Avett Brothers show here in Indy; his rig (which is in the YS) DPA 4061>DPAMMA6000>R09HR and my rig DPA 4061>MixPre>R09HR... same mic stand, same spread at 3', my mics about 1' higher than his and he got the better pull that night, more detail, clairty, just more presence than my tape...
When I first started running 4060>MMA6000>R-09 I did extensive testing with A-B spacing and height from typical FOB locations, making lots of adjustments, listening with phones, taking lots of notes, and then listening later on speakers. Most of that was done at the Spirit of the Suwannee Amphitheater back in ‘06. I was amazed how minor adjustments in both A-B width spacing and mic height affected the resulting recordings. The strong influence of what I figured were minor height changes (probably very PA/venue specific) was particularly unexpected to me, and differences of 6” much less 1’ were quite audible. I was surprised to find that in those tests, in that particular situation (hedge, hedge) that going higher than about a foot above head height reduced the highs and clarity significantly. Not saying that was the case in your comp or not, but don’t rule it out. Those tests were of a clustered point source PA, from about the equilateral triangle apex. I’d suspect that hanging line array PA’s would have less variation with height, but I haven’t tested that. Those same test recordings are what lead me to using and suggesting a 3' A-B spacing as a decent starting point for many situations.