my mic doesn't work

[poetic003]

I recently purchased my first condenser mic and phantom powered preamp for my home studio setup. I am a newbie and could use a little guidance. I assumed the setup would be fairly easy since my preamp is only equipped with a line in and a line out hookup. Unfortunately, I'm only receiving hum and static when I turn up the levels on my mixer. I was wondering if the problem could be the fact that my second line is a xlr -1/4 that runs from my preamp to my basic four channel radio shack mixer or, and this may sound dumb; the fact that the led light doesn't light up on the preamp when I turn on the phantom power? Is this a sign of a bad preamp, or just a bad led light. Any ideas, and help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[earworm]

ehm, i don't think i can find that in your post, please tell me how exactly you connect everything,

you did use an XLR cable to connect the mic to the preamp, right?
make sure the mic is connected to the MIC input of the preamp, isn't there a switch on the preamp that lets you switch between INSTRUMENT/MIC ?
thats what i got on my joemeek vc8, i got no phantompower led, only mic/instr led...
but if you do have a dedicated led for phantom power and it doesn't light up when you engage the phantom power, well then there must be something wrong with the preamp

sure you don't have 48v on your radioshak mixer? or anywhere else?
what kind of mic is it, what preamp is it, what cables are you using?

 

[poetic003]

Thanks for your response earworm. Yes, my mic is connected to the preamp input using xlr, and the second line runs from the preamp output directly to the mic input on my mixer. Both the mic and preamp were purchased from ebay and are an unknown brand with x-21-f marked on them. The mic is a dual diaphragm w/selectable freq. response. No, my mixer doesn't run off 48v, it operates on 9v battery or 12v power cord. The cables I'm using are standard rca cables.