Steve, the first thing to do is make sure you have mic gain turned on on your computer. You do this by opening volume control (it should either be a speaker icon in your tray, at the bottom right of your screen or, if not, click on Start/Programs/Accessories, then either Multimedia or Entertainment, then Volume control. If the microphone volume control isn't showing, click on Options then Properties and check the box next to Microphone in the window labeled "Show the following volume controls." With the mic volume showing, click on Advanced, then check the box next to Mic Gain in the other controls section.

Having done that, you may or may not get the volume you need. I use an old Yamaha amplified speaker as a pre-amp and it works fine for me. Mine has two line-in jacks, but I commonly use a jack doubler to feed two sources through the same jack. For normal Paltalk use, I use just one mic and try to position it to pick up both my voice and guitar. When I did my Paltalk concert last fall, I did use a resistance mixer so I could use several sources and have individualized control over each of them. Both methods have worked well with my 'pre-amp.' I should note that I took the speaker apart and removed the leads to the speaker itself so I wouldn't have feedback problems.