I was given a Samson R11 I think, anyway, the sound next to my Sure PG48 is the diffrence between day and night. The Samson was very tone deficient and had no real tonal quality. I have used it on bass cabs and it seems to do ok.
I just added 2 Shure 565s I bought for $30 from a pawn shop...they actually had a bunch of mics in a shoebox...I was hoping to find they were 545s...but you can just remove the foam from the inside of the ball to make them pretty much the same as an SM57...cept it is stainless steel and it can switch impedences.
It's cliche but true, a good engineer will find a way to make just about any mic work.
I've used Apex 435's on lots of sources and had great results, it's pretty hard to say a "mic" sucks when there are so many other factors that come into play. The room, cables, convertors, pre's, the list goes on!