Natalie, it sounds like you did the "shortcut" approach. It sounds like you basically made a "twisted pair" out of the CAT 5 twisted pairs ??? If so, that is why your amp is not running hot. Whereas your using 16 wires total, Chris' uses 54 wires. It is MUCH more reactive. Using your design, you end up with something that is quite similar to an XLO design and is of appr 15 gauge for each polarity.
We did something similar to your approach on my brothers system, but we took three runs of CAT5 and braided them. This gave us 12 conductors per + & -, leaving us with appr 13 1/2 gauge. Worked okay but always sounded somewhat lean and "splashy". I did not know if this was because we used the "plenum grade" stuff instead of the higher grade teflon jacket or if it was simply the nature of the cable.
I have two pairs of Teflon CAT5's built as Chris designed it. While they have tremendous bottom end, the highs are still somewhat splashy and smeared in my opinion. This cable takes a LONG time to settle in though and i might not have given them enough time. Then again, my brother ran his for well over a year, several hours a day and typically at good volume. They still never "smoothed out" as much as we would have liked. Sean
>
