Kick drum distortion

Maybe I’m gain staging this wrong but the problem I’m having is the kick drum inside mic is sounding distorted unless I have the input gain set well below 0db. I’ve tried multiple mics and cables and always the same issue. how do you guys set your input channel gain?

Have you tried using a PAD on the channel?

I have not. I will try that out. I’m so new that I didn’t know they had a pad option on the channel.