I was with you until this point. We've recorded with a music student using top of the range equiment and got better sounds using SM57s and SM58s because he didn't consider how to use them for that right sound for us.

Equipment will only help you so far. Like you say, experiment. We just did some work with a stomp box. Eventually we progressed from working on the floor with a food to placing it on a small wooden table, wrapped in a towel with masking tape over where our knuckles were hitting it.

58s and 57s are okay depending on what you are recording, if you are recording drums then fair enough as you don't really need that much clarity in higher frequencies. I would highly suggest trying a condenser for future works and then spend time learning mixing techniques so that your mixes sound better. It's a huge area of music to get into but it's learnable.