Sennheiser - MKH 8060

Can’t go wrong with any of those. For your consideration if you can score an MKH8060 that’s also a very sweet package.

Man I swear by the 8060, I love that thing so much. It's also awesome for when you're having to one man band and they wanna do cross-coverage or wide and tight or some such nonsense. Also does a great job of picking up production sounds in a way that is very usable in post. Though I do admit it's because I haven't really had a chance to try the others. I was able to get a freakishly good deal on a 1 time used 8060 so that's why I habe mine.

8040 & 8050 is my weapon of choice ;)

I use my MKH50 outdoors as well as indoors, but I use a Rycote baseball windscreen and that makes it much easier to work with. The MKH416 / 8060 are also great choices, HOWEVER if budget is a concern you can totally get away with the new Rode NTG 5, I've used that a bunch and it's quite good for the price point.

Once again it depends a lot on what exactly you do. Personally I like the Schoeps MiniCMIT very much. The Sennheiser MKH8060 is exactly as good in my opinion, just a slightly different taste. Bothe are excellent all-rounders outdoors. In some locations a Schoeps MK41 or Sennheiser MKH50 or MKH8050 is still necessary, when dealing with too many reflections (even outside)

I’m getting a tascam FR-AV2 and a Sennheiser MKH 8060 shotgun. I also have some lavs. I’m going to rig the tascam recorder and the mic onto the Smallrig cage!

I’ve got a Rycote HC-22 Pro shotgun that I mainly use for birds. It’s great, one of the quietest out there at 8.5 dBA self-noise. I picked it up used on eBay for $495. I recently upgraded to a Sennheiser MKH 8060. I was originally going to get a Sennheiser MKH 416-P48U3 (also a top pick at around $837), but then I noticed the 8060 is basically just an upgraded 416 with better sensitivity and lower noise, so I grabbed one used instead.

I think the 8060 and the 50 handle about the same, and have fairly similar patterns, while the 8060 is a little brighter and clinical, and the 50 darker and with dependable off-axis. I was going to suggest the 8050 before I saw you were actually giving your opinions and not asking advice, and I think yours align with mine about this mic. I've also used the 641, even more than 8050, but I just can't seem to get into a groove with it. Cool post.

800 series are a bit shit, as is the 609 guitar amp mic. Unpleasant sounding in a way I find it hard to describe. The 945, however, is a very nice mic that I use a lot. It suits most voices pretty well, lots of clarity and nice pickup pattern.

I went to a Sennheiser backed mic shootout at a world class studio. I think it was a NARAS meetup. They had all the Neumann mics lined up along with the 8000 series Sennheiser mics. I thought the 102 sounded thin and harsh compared to everything else in the room. Most others there agreed. The most pleasant sounding mic was the M149. The most real sounding mic was the 8000 series Sennheiser. They were much more transparent than the KM184. I’d say on par with the B&K, now known as DPA mics.