bands playing soft and clipping the preamp. Am I the only one?

[Outlaw Hans]

I've just finished recordings of pop-jazz band. Good players overall. The only thing is that at times they just play too soft. going to 2" I needed the hot signal or I'd be stuck with the hiss (which actually happened on some songs we had to redo). I wasn't able to track with compression at the time. Now I had the gain knobs of my MCI console at around a quarter past for vocals with the next gain stage (the fader) up at 0db. I had to do a major fader ride on a piano intro because he played it so soft. back electret omnis on piano so not much output from the mics either.
Exept for the drummer these were the -20db type of people (literally)...

The thing is there's distortion on some stuff. I hate it. We worked really hard and overall the sounds are good . Nothing hits 0db on the tape machine but it's still clipping. I'm pretty sure its the preamps just being driven too hot. How do you normally deal with stuff like that? Do you ever link preamps together or what? I was thinking of using a compressor just for more clean gain. Any horror stories or am I really the only one dealing with this problem? Methinks you should be able to track any band with a professional setup like an MCI console and 2" right?