old amp

I recently get a 75Watt amp from my uncle, which I decided would go good wiht the Optimus radio I have. When I hooked the amp to the radio however, it seemed that the amp stole too much power from the radio. I'm new to car audio, so I odn't know if I had it set up right: I had the radio hooked up to the amp which in turn was hooked up to the battery. Am I doing this wrong? Is the radio supposed to be in between?

was the amp hooked to the batter directly? the amp has to be direcly wired to the battery and you need a good ground.

i'm not sure that i understand whats goin on, are the radio's lights dimming or something? you should have a set of rcs running from the outputs of the radio to the inputs on the amp, and a turn on wire runnig from the radio to the amp, and a power wire running from the battery to the amp.

there is no inbetween, the amp recieves signal from the radio, and it recieves power from the battery. the radio doesn't get power from the amp. it is already hooked up to the radio through its wiring harness. i'm guessing this is an aftermaket headunit. what are you running with that amp?

I think I found the problem: the radios being put in a golf cart, which only has the 12 volt battery for power, which is fine for the radio, but the amp needs more. So I guess I won't be using the amp unless you knew a way to get more voltage. The amps at 14.4V. I don't think that the radio needs an on/off switch to the amp, as it has an on/off button (on/passive), the amp is an old Craig Powerplay 72 Watt (sorry for the wrong wattage) amp, it said on the side V503, which I think is the model #, the radio is an Optimus 12-2116 12 Volt aftermarket tape deck/ digital tuner.

P.S. I had the amp wired to the postive and ground on the battery, and i had the radio + and - hoked up to the amp, witht he constant hooked up to the battery. as for what do i have running with that amp, do u mean speakers or radio or what?

the amp doesn't need 14.4 volts to work, it should do fine with the 12 volts.

Yeah it should do perfectly fine, I test car amps in my room on an old computer power supply which only spits out ~11.5V and I haven't found an amp that wouldn't work yet, even my Avionixx 800.2 which is pretty sensitive to low voltage works fine.