yay!

long story short, it cost me 2 antenna's (1 amplified, 1 non), 1 y-cable, some smoke and melted wires, a slightly beat up dash, and some sanity.

after a lot of trial and error i can finally listen to my aftermarket radio. i had to put an amplified antenna behind the passenger dash cover and plug it and the factory antenna into a y cable that goes into my headunit. the worst part was that the amplified antenna had a **** poor 24ga wire that got too hot and melted causing me to poop myself when my dash started smoking one morning. i spliced in a bigger gauge power wire and voila it works great.

the amplified antenna is branded by autoloc.com and the y cable is some generic female-female to male. hope this helps anyone who's been having reception problems too.