Which loom to buy?

Do you mean a cable snake?

HOSA snakes are cheap, and last forever if you don't abuse them.
 
I've also heard good things about HOSA...but alternative advice:

Instead of buying pre-made cables, buy a soldering iron, a reel of decent cable and whatever number of connectors you need--then make your own. Soldering jacks and phono connectors is one of the easiest introductions to soldering you can find. Doing it this way, you'll be able to have exactly the right length and configuration and, when you need another cable or an adaptor for something new, you can have it in five minutes. You'll also be able to repair any broken or damaged leads.
 
Electrically, there's practically no limit to the length. However, since you mention phono connectors, we're obviously talking about unbalanced signals so the longer the run the more chance of interference.

You can minimise the effects of electrical interference by using good quality screened cable and by being careful of your runs, making sure they don't go adjacent to noise sources or parallel to mains leads. Beyond saying that, it's hard to predict. In the past I've run unbalanced signals down a 100 metre snake with no issues--but I've also had noise spikes on a 2 metre cable when it happened to run near a thermostat that arced every time the heating cut in or out.
 
For unbalanced runs, absolutely keep them under 10meters and the shorter the better due to noise issues.

Hosa is ok enough if you're hooking them up once in a low duty home studio and practically not touching them and never expect to sell them, but if they'll ever leave the house or you intend to use them commercially or want them to have any resale value at all, get something better. Head over to Redco and price yourself out a custom RCA to TS snake, it doesn't have to be super pricey depending on the cable stock and connectors you pick.

For your purposes, fancy cable stock isn't really important, but it is always worth getting better quality connectors! Nickel connectors need periodic cleaning, gold connectors stay cleaner and are more conductive. Hosa have as lousy quality connectors as I've seen.
 
Just had a call today from a friend who says he can get me a "snake" for £30 GBP. He says its called a "Klotz Monocore 16".
Any good?
 
Never heard of it. Will 16" seriously be enough for you? That's one short snake!
 
Keep unbalanced snakes as short as practical without putting any stress on the connectors. There should be some slack and then secure near the end of the snake on each side so the weight of it is not born by the jacks and connectors. The last two sets of 8 conductor snakes I bought for my TSR-8 were in 2003 and they still work like new. They are the Hosa RCA-to-RCA Model CRA802 2-meter (6.6 ft). They also have longer models and in different configurations like RCA to ¼”. Those are CPA prefix such as CPA803 3-meter and CPA805 5-meter, etc. I’ve always made most of my cables, but I had a moment of laziness and it worked out just fine with Hosa cables. They’re nothing fancy and you wouldn’t want to be taking them on tour, but for a studio they work as well as anything else.
 
Klotz make very good quality cables, here is their site. However the model number you gave does not bring up any products, you have to make sure it is audio cable.

Alan.
 
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