[Mike Rivers]

a-l wrote:
i noticed that the rca 44 mic goes up to about 10k. correct?

That's about right.

I had read that les paul loved this on guitar and this makes alot of sense.

Sure. It was about the best microphone, and about the only decent
quality microphone around when Les Paul started recording. And there's
practically nothing coming out of a guitar amplifier above about 5 kHz.

however i'm wondering about this type of curve on a variety of other
instruments.

The mic is a mic. The instrument is an instrument. They should
compliment each other.

there are also some very inexpensive electrets that have a similar curve...
i am not talking about quality of sound just the basic curves

what is the difference in sound between electret and condensor microphones?

An electret is a kind of element used in a condenser mic. They used be
the cheap condenser mics but today there are some very good sounding
mics that use an electret rather than externally polarizing the
capacitor element.

can you approximate the curves of these mics with a high and low pass
filter?

Sure, and maybe with a little adjustable midrange equalization. Curves
are mostly generated by the marketing department and don't very well
represent how a mic is going to sound in a particular application.

ive been noticing recently that there are some situations that i like a
limited freq range... dumbing it down seems to be working

That's a useful mixing technique to allow you to use things in a mix
that would naturally fight each other for their piece of the spectrum.

does anyone here intentionally use really cheap mics with high end preamps
to attain a sound, or vice versa high quality mics with intentionally low
quality preamps

Not usually. But experimentation is a wonderful thing. If you got stuff
that you're not using and you're looking for a different sound than
you're getting, it never hurts to try unexpected combinations.

But don't go out and buy a cheap mic or a great preamp just because you
read about the combination on a newsgroup. Whatever worked for someone
else probably isn't going to work for you.