in article OQ8wb.713$Yt4.486@lakeread05, Steven Dillon at
wrote on 11/23/03 3:34 PM:

When you talk about putting a mic back 6 feet from the player, how
does the mic have enough input without a pre-amp? I got everything
setup last night (the mics that I do have) and found that the SM81's
need almost all the trim that's possible and I had to lift the input on
the board a little too just to get them to have a respectable input level.
I can't get either one of them to go green and they aren't that far from
the guitar (14-16 inches). Compared to the Direct Out from the amps,
which I had to turn nearly off to calm them down, I can barely hear
the SM81's... :-/

Thanks,

Steven Dillon

All (well, nearly all) condenser mics need preamplification. You have
preamps on your mixing board, along with phantom power (or else the SM81s
wouldn't work). What model of board do you have. It doesn't sound right
that you can't get enough gain out of the SM81s. Something sounds amiss.
--
Stephen T. Boyke