Shrimp,

The Coles 4038's are amazing sounding mics and I've used them on everything from drum overheads to acoustic guitars to male vox. They aren't flat and neutral by any stretch of the imagination, but the color that they impart lends itself to a very fat, warm and totally musical sonic character. The low end is unbelievably big and rich and although the highs are a bit too rolled off for some, the midrange is unlike any other. I haven't compared them to Royer's but I'm sure those are excellent mics as well.

I don't usually use them through the DA7's pre's, but don't recall them being incompatible gain-wise. You will definitely test the quality of your pre's however, and need to pay special attention to noise in your signal path.

My 20Hz.