soundhaspriority wrote:

You may want to consider getting some Avenson Audio STO-2s.

They look
like an inexpensive alternative to Earthworks. But these mics have about 10
dB more self noise than typical.

The orignal Earthworks measurement style mics are a little on the noisy
side. They made better (quieter) models later. It comes with the
territory when you have a small diaphragm - not a lot of output for a
given SPL, so for the same voltage out of the microphone you get more
noise.

Also, they're
electrets, not AT back electrets, but real electrets, with the greater noise
that implies.

An electret is the electrostatic equivalent of a permanent magnet.
They're all real, and they're all "back." Back when manufacturers first
started to make inexpensive mics, they used electrets to save the cost
of providing a DC polarizing voltage, and at the time, all of the
electret mic capsules were cheap and crummy. There's no reason why an
electret mic capsule can't be good, it's just that the only market for
electrets at the time were in cheap mics. The Shure SM-81, which has
been around for over 25 years, has an electret capsule and it sounds
fine and is reasonably quiet for mics of that period. New ones are even
quieter.

Don't perpetuate rumors about the technology based on when product
demand was for cheap electrets.