why arent my subs working right?

i toko the positive/negative wires off my sub box bc i needed to see how torn up my trunk carpet was from the previos amp i had in there. and when i hooked it back up. my subs are barely working.. one of the wires as writing on it(which i would think would mean positive), but it has a negative symbol on it. i've tried moving the wires around.. and no matter where i put them.. it as the same ****ty sound..nothing better..nothing worse..
could putting the positive wire int he negative slot and vise versa on the sub box.. ruin the subs? any ideas of what im doing wrong? did i ruin anything here.:cry:

I don't think connecting the wires out of phase (backwards) would ruin the subs. I would bet you have a bad connection somewhere. I would check the connection inside the box, from the amp to the box, amp to the ground, etc. A bad ground can really screw things up. Is it possible that you kinked one of the wires and broke it? If the wires aren't new (or relatively new) then I would replace them.

Oh yea- double check the head unit and make sure you didn't accientally adjust something like the bass,sub, etc. I know it sounds stupid but I accidentally adjusted down the bass on my head unit once by accident and then spent an hour tracking down wires.

Where are you located?

Good luck with it-