An electrophysiologic catheter (10) with a distal electrode assembly (15) carrying very closely-spaced bipole microelectrodes (85) on a plurality of divergent spines (42) that can flexibly spread over tissue surface area minimized detection of undesirable noise, including far-field signals. Each spine has a flexible microelectrode panel (80) having a substrate, at least one pair of microelectrodes, a trace for each microelectrode, and a soldering pad. Adjacent microelectrodes of a bipole pair are separated by a space gap distance ranging between about 50-300 microns. Each microelectrode may have a width of about 200 or 300 microns.
