Best mic for spoken word (esp female) up to around £500 GBP

Hi folks.



I record a lot of spoken word, especially non-professional female voices. I have a reasonably well sound-proofed and treated vocal booth, though it's quite small (about 6 x6 inside) and is not impervious to outside noise. The sort of material I typically record is softly spoken. So my main issues of concern are:

1. Getting enough quiet gain for a decent signal - i.e. need very low self-noise mic
   


2. Dealing with non-professional and predominately female voices - so I need something that deals with sibilance and high end very well
   


3. Avoidance of unnatural colouration, tonal harshness etc - i.e. can't overproduce or bury things in a mix as end result is just naked, exposed speech. I'm always telling VOs to stay a consistent distance and on-axis to avoid tonal changes.
   


4. Not having a mic that's wildly sensitive because of possible extraneous noise from outside and because my VOs are typically not trained and I fight to get them to sit still sometimes.

I use a Rode NT2000 in cardioid pattern into a TLAudio 5001 pre at the moment. To be fair, it's a very quiet (7db) and pretty good mic for the price, and sounds great on pro voices. Still, there's a tendency for a sort of 'raspy' mid range sometimes and the 's' sounds of the ladies can sound quite harsh and compressed even with sensitive de-essing later. Of course, any mic is only as good as the source going into it.



But I need a second mic as backup / upgrade and I could go to around £500 GBP.



What would people recommend?

Best mic for spoken word (esp female) up to around £500 GBP