the t.bone CD 55

I don't know why I spent years buying industry standard mics. This little mic, for the price, simply cannot go wrong. It's plastic, so I'm not sure it'd withstand too many errand hits, but really, it's quite fine for the purpose of mic'ing toms and snares. I have two toms I'm using these for, and seriously, a little corrective EQ, and it's absolutely fine for the vast majority of us home studio guys. You'd have to be pretty picky to want to spend 4 times the price on a mic that will maybe sound 10% better. What is the point... Cheap doesn't mean bad, not in this day and age!

Okay, they do have a very narrow frequency response, they sound thin and dull at the same time, BUT:
this makes them very useful for sounds that need to take less space in the mix, I wouldn't use them for toms, but they make snare tops sound quite puffy (which is great for some styles), they are great as snare bottoms, they can be useful for electric guitar accents and take saturation well, so they can be used for effect vocals or drum room crush mics.
They actually feel great and they come with quite decent tom mounts that I now use for my Oktava MK-012 mics.

Also, because of their lack of bottom end, they don't have a strong proximity effect, so you can place them QUITE close to the sound source without having to EQ out several db of 150-300Hz.

After hearing them on toms I was going to sell them off, but after experimenting with them I think they are indeed useful for certain tasks and they are definitely worth the money. I'm keeping them!

Bought these during lockdown, so now about 2 years old. In my shed they've survived 2x cold winters and 2x warmish summers (in England, so you might not agree with the definition of warm and cold :)). Been hit with drum sticks, too. Two have survived, one got hit too many times. They're quite flimsy but as I said, I still have two left after all this time. One I now dangle over my guitarists amp so I can run his sound through my in-ears. The other I now use as a practice vocal mic. It's easy to put on a boom behind by drum throne. Great sound for the price but I dont think I'd use it live as a vocal. They were used to record the drums and I was really impressed; at this price they're amazing.