Can't recieve any or little transmissions

I found with mine, I used the ball mount style to my rear bumper, it is all about grounding. If you take an ohm meter and attach to the antenna and also to the ground wire of the coax, with the coax not attached to the radio, you should not have an ohm reading. Or to say you should not have a closed circuit. Likely, you will see in this case there is a closed circuit. A closed circuit will indicate a short. A closed circuit should only exist with the antenna attached to the radio. If there is a short, chances are it is where the antenna attaches to the truck box. Basically if you think of it as pos and neg, the neg, or the ground, should be tied directly to the body of the vehicle, through the tool box, or bumper. The positive is the actual antenna through to the inner wire of the coax, to the radio. Often, it shorts out where the large bolt, or the nut passes through the vehicular body, ie the bumper or in your case truck box. With my ball mount style this means having a one inch hole big enough for the nut to clear through the hole and not to touch the grounding plane. hope this helps

You have to match your antenna to your truck. You have to make sure the mount or antenna has a good ground, now if you grab the bottom of your antenna bracket around the stud does this change the noise in your truck. If so then you need to run a ground if not you probably don't have a ground problem, you grabbing it is giving it a ground you can ground it by self tapping screws in the tool box into side of truck. Or if its not a ground problem try another antenna shorter or taller to see if that works and make sure you have at least 18 ft of coax and good coax at that.