80's Pioneer Amps

[highboy_coupe]

I have just purchased two pioneer GM-40 amplifiers, with plans to install them in my very 80's Renault. One will power the front speakers and one the back pair. So far I have installed some decent power lead from the battery fused at 10 amps, this then splits to power each amp which are each fused at 5 amps.
Each amp has an 8 pin oversized DIN plug, which contains line in, a red power lead and an orange lead that I presume is needs a signal to turn the amp on. I have resoldered decent phono cable to the PCB in place of the original, so all that sticks out of the back are RCA connectors and the orange wire. Each amp has a seperate lead with the speaker outputs, earth and the 12v input.
When connected up to a 12v battery the amps turn on if power is connected AND the red and orange wires are connected together, this seemed simple enough, the orange wire needed 12v down it to turn the amps on. But I cannot get them to work with the 12v ignition wire from my car connected to the orange wire. Does anyone have any ideas?? Thanks.

[highboy_coupe]

Alright, I bought a pair of SPST relays and wired the power out and the turn on signal (BTB) to each side, then passed the ignition live across the two relays.
Ok, that's two 80's amps with annoying proprietary DIN plugs ripped apart and resoldered with modern connections, the speakers outputs are connected to an ISO plug, it uses RCA's for line in and relays to turn itself on. I'm sure this could have been easier!!
Cheers.

[dangus]

Those Pioneer amps were designed back when not every head unit had a "power antenna" switched 12V output. So, what they did was pass 12V through the amp to the head unit and sense when the head was turned on. If you look at the GM120 schematics you can see what they did. It wouldn't be hard to modify to operate normally, using a relay or transistor or something.