The MTX is bigger, about 200rms. Since the signal coming from the headunit to the stock subwoofer is soo weak, perhaps an amp designed to receive very weak inputs might be a solution(that's probably how the stock audiophile amp does it). I guess more research is in order......

Has anyone ever heard of certain amps being much more sensitive to incomming signal strength that others?

 

fujio,if you spliced into your sub outputs with regular speaker wire.Then connected them to high level input on the amp it will not work.

The output for the sub is low-level output,same as an RCA cable.The front and rear speakers are high level outputs coming out of the hu.

Tap into the sub harness with a female RCA plug,run an rca cable to the amp,plug him in and let there be thump.

If your amp has no low-level inputs,you are sol

Here I used RCA y-plug

 

What model # is your amp? I've been to the MTX website and it seems that most amps have both low level and High level inputs. You need to determine if you have both types of inputs or one of the others.

If your amp only has low level, than you should be able to connect it as cccmachine describes. If your amp only has high level inputs, that means that the signal in the +/- wires has been amplified already, but your amp will reduce this signal internally. Cccmachine is correct when he says that all of the speaker wires coming from the HU and going to the each speaker are high level, or amplified by the factory HU. This is why I suggested trying to hook up one of these wires to your amp, because they might be high level inputs. You could quickly pull the speaker cover off the front door panel, unscrew the large speaker, disconnect the speaker, and run this +/- to your amp to see if you get more sound (as a test). But again, your manual should be clear about what type on inputs your amp is expecting.

 

The amp I was using was an MTX Thunder 202. I will look into the other MTX amps to see which ones have the low level inputs. This is very helpful! Now I am starting to understand the difference between high and low level inputs. I do not think the 202 has low level inputs. The idea of connecting the sub signal wire to a female rca sounds pretty solid. I am definately going to have to try this! It is only a matter of time before I get this to work! Besides replacing the whole audiophile system, anyone find worthwhile upgrades to augment the sound quality???

 

I just looked on the MTX website for your amp. It has both low level (line level) and high level (speaker level) inputs. The 'smart engage' feature only works with the high level inputs, which the sub wires you are using are not. You need to connect the sub wires to the RCA inputs, and also run a 12v switched lead. If you were going to run high level inputs to the amp (say from the rear speakers) than you would not need to hook up the 12v switch wire - the 'smart engage' would do this for you.

I am really suprised Car Toys could not help you with this - but I'm glad we could.