I think you have this backwards. Condensers and electrets (a form of condenser with a permanent charge on one terminal) almost always have a built-in preamp. The reason is that they cannot drive a capacitive load of any magnitude, and their outputs must be buffered before being fed to any wiring.

Like another post mentioned, dynamic mics like the Shure SM58 mentioned here, can drive a cable directly or through a small built-in transformer. They're still used in live sound, though condensers have become quite common there too. Condensers still tend to have somewhat better behavior, such as signal-to-noise, than electrets.

Of course everything has to be amplified or fed to a digitizer at some point. The issue is where the preamp needs to be physically located.

* The vast majority of mics for PCs are condensers and electrets.*

These can be run in reverse as well, it requires CB custom electronics so it’s not something a lay person can do out of the box.

Huh? The standard stage mic, the Shure SM58, certainly is dynamic and has no preamp.

But you probsbly think about smaller form mics like found on headsets (Electrets).

What’s wild is that most things having to do with light, magnetism, and/or electricity are interchangeable and reversible. Put electricity through a wire and it’ll create a magnetic field, or wave a magnetic field near a wire and it’ll create electricity. That means that putting electricity into an LED creates light and a magnetic field, or putting light into the LED creates electricity and a magnetic field, or waving a magnetic field near it will create electricity in the wires and light from the LED. Granted for that last one you’ll need a spinning magnetar nearby, or just add some more wire to the LED and it becomes a kitchen counter experiment.

Same interchangeability with solar panels, transformers, thermoelectric devices, etc. The effect might be big or small, depending on the setup, but the physics is happening either way.

I’ve spent time lost in space thinking about how much stuff is really just a copper wire in various configurations.

Have a copper wire - it’s an antenna, magnet, inductor, fuse, thermometer, heater, and strain gauge.

Put another copper wire near it - it’s a capacitor.

Curl one more than the other - it’s a transformer.

Put iron on it - it’s a thermocouple.

Put electricity through it - it’s a peltier cooler.

Add salt water - it’s a battery.

Put electricity through it - the iron is now a permanent magnet.

Wave the permanent magnet near it - it’s a generator and a microphone.

Put electricity through it again - it’s a motor and a speaker.

Heat it up and it’ll make Cuprous Oxide - it’s a solar panel and a diode.

Put electricity into it - it’s an LED.

Same with LEDs, they can be reversed to generate electricity.

What's their spectrum?