I'm not sure there's really much progression to actually do. I've been comparing mics for years - I'm a collector really, and most of my collection simply sits in boxes because what I get is what I want. What I struggle with are drums. I've never been expert, just good enough to charge. I also can't play drums - luckily I can play most other instruments, but apart from an electronic kit, I have no real drums - I had some but sold them a few years back. If I collect all the mics that you'd put on drums, I'd have a pile of EV, Shure, Sennheisers, AKG and a few odds and ends. ALL of these if you speak into them are clearly very different, but stick them on a drum - and hit it and you get a spike of sound. The differences, so obvious on a voice, are just hidden. Stick a Sennheiser 421 on a tom or a Shure 57 and both go boing. Tonally different boings but you grab some EQ and it's a tom again. I see people like Alan Parsons grab a couple of ribbons for overheads, but he's in a really well designed room. Use a ribbon and the room sound becomes part of the overall kit sound - but only when the room allows, and that's the rub. I don't record drums in my studios, so when I want to, I'll record them somewhere else, and locally, the key feature for drum spaces is DEAD and insulated, as in very little room sound at all. Nobody in my area has a space big enough to have any character. I have a couple of EVs - an RE20 and 320, and the 320 gets good reviews for kick, but I still plod on with the AKG D112 because it's clicky not boomy, which works for me. I've always avoided the kits because although they're cost effective, I rarely like every mic (and I rarely buy any mic that I can't/won't use on other things and the Shure kits feature overheads I'm not keen on. The Sennheisers have nice sounding overheads, but I'm not keen on the kit etc. I bought some Audix ones but they turned out to be fakes, and not at all nice sounding. I like the Sennheiser tom clip ons - because they also work pretty well on other instruments. I sort of have a good/no good experience with drum mic choices - and the good list is tricky to then make sense of.