EAT Jo No 8

In 2018, E.A.T.'s Jo N°5 moving-coil cartridge raised the bar for affordable transducers capable of high-end performance. Reviewers around the world acknowledged that it was remarkable for a cartridge at its price point. But, they mused, what would E.A.T. deliver with no price constraints? According to founder and CEO Jozefina Lichtenegger, "Jo N°8 was created because of the demand to go one step further, following of the success of Jo N°5. Customers and distributors concurred that the design was an obvious candidate for more exclusive components, an even more carefully conducted, higher level of selection and – ultimately – a superlative, but inevitably more costly and exclusive precision-made body. We knew that this recipe would result in a wonderful-sounding transducer."

Use of the word "transducer" is the key to understanding the demands of the design criteria, with the recognition that a cartridge is just such a device: a turntable/cartridge is an electromechanical transducer that converts mechanical information into an electrical signal, working in exactly the opposite manner of a loudspeaker. This conversion is, in the opinion of E.A.T. the MOST CRITICAL element in an audio chain because any distortion or non-linearity in the amplification is ten times less than what occurs at the speakers or via the cartridge.

For the fastidious listener, any increase in one's investment in a fine cartridge is worthwhile. The benefits include the reduction of distortion to a minimum and the achievement of a perfectly flat frequency response. Accomplishing both is extremely demanding, requiring the utmost attention to detail, abetted by the use of only the highest quality materials.

But that is not enough: the designer must understand how to apply these in combination: the stylus, the cantilever, the bearing, the suspension, the "motor" and lastly, the body shell, working in perfect harmony. To elevate the already-exceptional perfor-mance of the N°5, E.A.T. has employed for the N°8 a nude Shibata stylus on a boron cantilever, contained in a matte-finished wooden body made of solid chestnut. A perfect match for the new F-Note tonearm, the Jo N°8 moving-coil cartridge will extract more from the groove than previously imagined.