Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

While the bulbous mint-green carapace that protects EAT's Jo N^o5 looks very bulky, it's the internal alloy frame, yoke, magnets and mounting plate that really contribute to the high 15g overall bodyweight. Fortunately EAT's 12cu-specified compliance for the Jo N^o5 is bang on the money, maintaining the likely arm/cartridge resonance at a sensibly high 9Hz with 10-11g medium mass tonearms. In practice the claimed 20° VTA is rather closer to 28° and the optimistic 80µm 'trackability' specification more like 65µm/70µm via the left/right channels, respectively, just breaching 1% THD at +16dB (re. 315Hz/5cm/sec). The maximum +18dB groove modulation sent our Jo N^o5 skipping off into the lead-out groove at its rated 2.4g downforce, but tracking is still excellent for such a low compliance design.

The functional engineering is contemporary, from its alloy cantilever with crimped end and perfectly-mounted 8x40µm line-contact diamond. Moreover the modest 300µV rated output (re. 1kHz/5cm/sec) actually turns out closer to 445µV – an improvement of 3.4dB – while channel balance is far better than the spec'd 1.2dB at just 0.3dB. The Jo N^o5's response is sculpted for a solid bass with a milder mid/presence and 'brighter' aspect to central images [black trace, Graph 1] than those at the periphery of the soundtage [red trace]. The excellent generator symmetry is arguably better reflected by the similar distortion trends of lateral and vertical sweeps [black and red traces, Graph 2]. Lateral (mono) cuts suffer typically <1% up to 3kHz and <7% up to 10kHz (–8dB re. 5cm/sec), the peaked distortion at 20kHz more a reflection of the Jo N^o5's potential bandwidth than any non-linearity in the performance of the MC generator. PM

Generator type/weight Moving-coil: / 15g
Recommended tracking force: 2.2-2.5mN (2.4mN)
Sensitivity/balance (re. 5cm/sec): 445µV / 0.31dB
Compliance (vertical/lateral): 12cu / 11cu
Vertical tracking angle: 28 degrees
L/R Tracking ability: 70μm / 65μm
L/R Distortion (–8dB, 20Hz-20kHz): 0.7–25% / 0.5–12%
L/R Frequency resp. (20Hz-20kHz): +0.8 to –7.7dB / +0.4 to –3.7dB
Stereo separation (1kHz / 20kHz): 28dB / 20dB
Price: £999