Thanks for the reply guys, after a little tinkering, I noticed, whenever I run the phantom from on to off, I go get good sound levels for about 1 second, then they taper off from there.
 
when going from phantom off to on, I don't get much of anything.
 
that is telling me the the mic and cable are good right?

Good for a second implies a capacitor discharging, so a wall power supply is worth trying. Does the Solo come with one?

The solo does not come with one. it only has a USB connection in the back, no option for external power :(

I apologize, I am on cell so is difficult to type. Focusrite has always responded to emails for me pretty quickly, so is definitely worth sending them an email. If you give them your system specs and how you have hardware setup, they may be your best resource for gain issues. Definitely make mention of the powering off phantom power, since that may be crucial to being a setup issue or potential hardware issue.

Quick edit: if you click the "permalink" at the top of forum posts, you can include hyperlinks to specific forum posts in an email to them as well.