Rega Apheta 2 MC Cartridge Announced
Iconic British manufacturer Rega, have announced their second generation flagship moving coil cartridge, dubbed simply 'Apheta 2'.
Upon the release of the first generation Rega Apheta cartridge back in 2006, Art Dudley of Stereophile wrote, "It seems that Rega would be the last company on earth to do anything just because everyone else does; thus it comes as no real surprise that Rega would decline to make a moving-coil (MC) cartridge unless and until they had a very good reason to do so." That release was some years in the making, and the launch came and went. While the original Apheta cartridge may have divided fans on the performance, Rega have waited some another nine years to update their flagship.
Rega says their engineers have fine tuned every aspect of the original design, and that's a promising statement, as the Apheta was certainly a good cartridge.
Apheta 2 features "a super high-powered, neodymium magnet and a coil meticulously hand wound on an iron cross that is fifty percent smaller than the original. This weight reduction allows us greater freedom to track the vinyl groove ensuring even more detail is extracted from the vinyl."
The Apheta 2 is housed within a completely redesigned, single piece, aluminium anodised body and protected by a CAD designed, clear rigid cover to protect the internal fine wires, which Rega says, "makes handling whilst fitting, safe and risk free."
Rega says their entire production department was overhauled at great expense to introduce the Apheta 2 MC. "Huge investments were made into High Definition magnification cameras and displays that allowed us to work at much higher detail and far tighter tolerances than ever possible on the original model."
Features
- Iron cross & coil assembly 50% smaller than the original Apheta
- One of the worlds smallest MC generator
- Cutting edge neodymium magnet
- Vital profile nude diamond stylus
- High specification fine wire
Specifications
- Tracking Pressure 1.75 - 2.00g
- Input load impedance 100 ohms
- Output impedance 10 ohms
- Nominal output voltage 350μV
- Channel Balance : ≥ 20μV
- Separation : ≥ -29dB
Rega Apheta 2 MC Phono Cartridge will be available late March - early April 2015. Local pricing has not been announced as yet.
Rega is distributed in Australia by Synergy Audio Visual.
Marc Rushton
StereoNET’s Founder and Publisher was born in England and raised on British Hi-Fi before moving to Australia. He developed an early love of music and playing bass guitar before discovering the studio and the other side of the mixing desk. After writing for print magazines, Marc saw the future in digital publishing and founded the first version of StereoNET in 1999.
Posted in: Hi-Fi
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