cat 5

[wee tee cee]

Bought a cat 5e patch cable for £1.32 off amazon free postage to boot. After a chat with another member I thought I might give it a go as speaker cable. It duly arrived, its 36 awg -so very thin. I run short interconnects of jumper length a product of which lets me try various cables without breaking the bank.
The cat 5e I doubled up so two runs per channel into sewel deadbolts.
The cabling is very small and fiddly so I gave up trying to strip the insulation and resorted to melting it off.
The result was quite suprising- its pretty good. No real sonic nasties that I could detect over an hour of listening. First impressions where that it was very open and tight.
Having done a bit of reading some folks had problems with amps over heating-hence my thinking on doubling up.

I have a couple of days off coming up and will be able to get some listening done.

[awkwardbydesign]

If you plait it (http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/triple_t_e.html), the high capacitance can cause some amps to oscillate. It did that with mine. I now use a high capacitance litz configuration, but with a zobel network at the speaker terminals. 8.2 ohms in series with 100nF across the speaker terminals. All OK so far.
BTW, the overheating was probably for this reason, and doubling up will INCREASE the capacitance, making it worse. High RESISTANCE in the cables will overheat the cables, not the amp.

[wee tee cee]

It was braided already in its sheath. I just doubled it up to get more wire in play. Sounds pretty good IMHO.

[Stratmangler]

It was braided already in its sheath. I just doubled it up to get more wire in play. Sounds pretty good IMHO.

It's not braided, it's twisted.
The individual conductor pairs are twisted together, and then all the pairs are twisted together.

If you like cheap speaker cable you can do a lot worse than using 0.75mm mains flex, and flex is unlikely to cause capacitance instability issues in the amplifier.

[wee tee cee]

The cat 5 is substituting for TQ UB. Sounds very good in my set up-hopefully no majik smoke will appear!!!!

[awkwardbydesign]

It all depends on the amp. If yours is OK, that's fine. Just remember this conversation if you ever change amps.