I have a lovely Pendulum to cover my tube pre needs. I don't have a tube mic, however. The cheap ones I've auditioned have a bit of gauze over the picture, but I assume good ones can sound spectacular and clear. Here's question 1. All things being equal which I know they are not, will a nice tube pre obviate a tube mic. Is a tube mic just giving me "tuby-ness" (like the pre) or is there some other important quality such as linearity or headroom that the mic circuit imparts. Shall I just think about tubes or iron as palette options? If so, could I handle them with a range of pres and forget about tube mics?

Question 2: I heard someone who seemed smart the other day say that they wer'nt surprised that their transformerless mics sounded better through transformerless preamps. Does this actually make electronic sense in any way? Again, the individual might have had second rate transformer based pre, and a great transformerless pre.

Basically, I want to augment my Pendulum and Focusrite red with another great pre that is not colored, but I'm not sure about whether I might be better off getting color from the pre or the mic.