It must come down to this:

Quote:
When I dismantled my install, it had been connected in such a way that if the tuner was unplugged, the player wouldn't boot. It was also connected in a way that if the antenna was disconnected, it wouldn't boot.


That's just not right. That indicates something very wrong with the wiring. I'm guessing that the problems you're having now are because there's still something wrong, something related to that original issue you described there. I see a few possibilities here:

1. Some of the wires that are coming from your car aren't connected to the things you think they're connected to. In other words, there's something messed up in the wiring without your knowledge.

2. Something is shorting out, something out of sight, like the Amp Remote wire is chafed somewhere and it's shorting out against the car body.

3. There's a serious grounding problem, for instance, the ground wire that you're connecting to isn't actually connecting to ground, and the act of hooking up the antenna or the tuner completes the ground (through the antenna and through the tuner) so that the player works in that case. Did you also get a lot of ground loop noise?

Those are my guesses for now.
_________________________
Tony Fabris