[Elecraft] GM5 driving the K3 poorly

[Dan Schieler]

I just received my K3 s/n 901 with MCU FW 1.96 and
1.73 for the dsp.  I am using a Heil Goldline GM5 mic
in the narrow setting.  Power output is just fine on
CW in all bands.  However on SSB, I can’t seem to get
much power out unless I whistle very loud into the mic
on the narrow setting...on the wide setting it is even
worse.  I am reading the bar graph on the radio, not
an analog guage on my tuner
I went thru the setup for
ALC, mic gain, compression and got the bars in the
right place but it still doesn’t give me more than 10w
in a normal or even loud voice with the power set at
100Watts..  Maxing out the mic and compression helps a
bit, but I can imagine it may not be too pleasant to
listen to on the other end
dabbling with the TXG VCE
and pushing it to 2db helps a bit...before someone
says that you can't measure SSB output on the bar
graph or analog meter, my reference is my K2 with the
HM36 Icom mic that at similar power settings shows
much higher power output than the K3...even trying to
drive my AL811H amplifier with the K3 set to 70W and
loud talking only gets me to about 120W output where
the K2 at 70W SSB peaks over 600 Watts using the tuner
wattmeter....something isn't going right with this K3
and GM5 combo...any ideas?

thx
K5GUS