Hi twd
A bold statement. What else have you tried but condemmed in preferance to a shure. I have tried just about every make and a good number of models over the years. Quite frankly there is so much myth and false loyalties spoken about mics. I have proved in tests two things that are worth learning.

1. Everybodys voice is different and some makes of mics suit a voice whilst others do not. One man's meat is another man's poison.

2. We tried an experiment. In a blindfolded test people like you who prefer Shure were asked to choose the mic which sounded best. The eq and settings were identical. Everybody except one thought that the best mic was not the shure and were surprised.

I have two sm58 that I carry with me as backups. I prefer Audio Technica which came top in the blindfold test. I have to really jack up the gains to almost distortion level to get the same volume that is crystal clear.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=687727&songID=5238055