Allaerts is far from a household name among cartridge makers. This is primarily because there are very few of these cartridges around. Each one is individually hand-made by Jan Allaerts himself and the models from the MC1B up take over forty hours of work to complete. That's a week's work. Most "handmade" cartridges take a few minutes or a couple of hours at most. Allaerts is an obsessive. The degree of precision is difficult to surpass. Allaerts believes that stresses in metal will alter the sound so he individually grinds and mills each terminal from a piece of iron to not stretch or distort the molecules. The terminal pins are milled from 14 carat gold. The gold coils in the Finish are 20 microns

 

   MC2 COIL VIEW 

 thin and hand wound because there is no machine capable of the delicacy needed. Every aspect of the cartridge represents something close to state of the art, from the gold-leafed copper cartridge case (acting as a Faraday cage), to the aged Schor rubber suspension (which will last many decades), the seriously powerful rare earth magnet and the boron cantilever (it may still be possible to request other materials for the cantilever.).

  

MC2  cantilever

 

These technical characteristics translate into some fairly unheard-of performance figures. Channel separation runs from 60db at 1k to 70dB at 100Hz and 20kHz. That's right, 70dB...!!! Look at the specs on almost all high-end cartridges. Getting to 35dB is an achievement. 70dB reads like a misprint and along with the Formula One represents the state of the art. Frequency response is flat from 3Hz to 100kHz.  

TECHNICAL DATA
Coil impedance 32 Ohm 
Load impedance 845 Ohm
Load capacity   150 pF 
Stylus pressure 1.8 grams, Max. tolerance 0,05 gram
Output voltage 150 µV 
Max. tracing capacity >400 µmm 
Channel separation >70 dB at 100  Hz
>60 dB at 1   KHz
>70 dB at 20 KHz
Frequency range    3 Hz to 150 KHz 
Total  THD % 0.01  % 
Total unit weight 11 grams (incl. socket screws) 
 

 

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS                     

MC2 F1
 
Casing Manually milled and drilled aluminium. 
Special prepare for Gold coated 100 µmm 
Cover 0,3 mm thick, coated with 24 ct. gold foil. 
Color Gold colored finish  24 ct Kobalt.
Terminals Soft iron, shaped by grinding and milling. 
Special prepare for Gold coated 100 µmm 
Connector pins 1,3 mm x 20 mm, 14 ct. solid gold pins. 
Screw bushes 2.5 mm brass threaded bushes mounded into casing. 
Magnet Permanent. (Cat.: rare earth magnet)  Samarium-Cobalt 
Power : max. BH (Kj/m3°) 280 
Coil 2 mm x 2 mm, Teflon Type c 1005 +
Coil windings 20 micron gold handwinding wire +
Stylus holder Solid Boron rod: 0,3 mm x 7 mm. 
Angle of stylus in holder: 0°. 
Stylus tip TIP FG-S High Tech diamond, highly polished finish. 
Rounded radius 4 micron. 
Shock absorption High Tech Rubber, 120 SCHOR
Tension wire Steel wire spring, code 1007 +. 

 

 

The Sound...(6MOON REVIEW)

So you set the thing up and for some reason, you've got to go out. Now imagine that your cartridge is like your favorite pet, an exotic and prize-winning Siamese cat with a world-class enigmatic character. You go out, do your stuff, come back and turn the turntable on. And you literally pale. Because instead of your favorite cat, you've got a leopard in the house. You have something absolutely amazing. It's huge, fiery eyed but incredibly delicate. In fact it camouflages itself, so at moments it's a jungle leopard and the next instant it's a snow leopard . You can just see its eyes, then in the most split of an instant, it's somewhere else completely but so quietly, you didn't even hear it go. You didn't see it hardly either. You get the idea. The scale of the cartridge is simply cathedral like. Galactic. It has incredible power but that power and resonance and oceanic depth is controlled invisibly, by the lightest of paws. Never has such power been joined at the hip with such speed and finesse. Such blood-rushing beauty. I mean the thing is life changing.

  This is not by nature a lush cartridge. It's weirdly warm and fast but somehow different from the typical scale. If one puts SPUs at the warmer end and the Lyras at the other of the good cartridges made today, the Finish sits in the warm lighting section. In fact it depends on the phono stage. Combine it with a Groove Plus or SRX and the effect is going to major on lightning-fast speed and agility but it will be coolish. Give it to the Tron Seven and tonal color will come across more, as well as a more robust, holographic presentation and you might begin to see a blush of lush. The choice is yours.


It'a not that the Finish is considerably better than the Mk2. It's way better. Way better. Harmonics are room size and flare out like instant Aurora Borealises. I've never experienced anything like this. Before the Allaerts arrived, I'd sort of thought I'd save it for classical and jazz. Pop and rock is so compressed, I figured I'd just be wasting the stylus. But then I listened and from Sinead on down, it just turned the whole experience into something new. The echo on "I do not want what I haven't got" is absolutely cavernous. In fact, the Groove SRX/Finish combination has a lot to say about "neutrality". You thought you had a good idea what a song really sounds like? Take that idea and chuck it out the window. This is a completely different landscape. There is so much more separation and a somehow deeper space between the instruments not just physically but rhythmically and in every other sense, and suddenly everything is different. Really different.


We all know how much harder it gets to improve a system after a certain point. We can spend a lot and get illusory gains or ones we mentally quantify in the 2% or thereabouts. The kind of differences that take time, even weeks to really latch onto. Well, this is not the case with this Allaerts. It has catapulted this system into a different class. The kind of effect on a system is almost priceless but I'm also going to call the Allaerts good value. Why? It's estimated the stylus will last between 7,000-10,000 hours. That is, between 7 and 10 times as long as an ordinary one. If you calculate that out, it makes it on par or cheaper than a Music Maker. There are many fine cartridges available today but if you are a serious vinylista and you've been through a few of the stars, you owe it to yourself to find out what the Finish has to offer. I'm sure you'll also find it an exhilarating and unforgettable experience...

 

FULL 6 MOON REVIEW  :http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/allaerts/finish.html

 

 

 hi fi race MC2 FINISH  (Greece)   

 

 

 

"It made a positive impression from the out, delivering alarming bass power alongside broad dynamic and tonal variety from The Aphex Twin's robust Windowlicker. Moving onto something more subtle, Shostakovich's String Quartet No 8 revealed the cartridge's ability to reveal timbre, string tone and presence which it did with considerable aplomb."   "This Allaerts cartridge proved impossible to criticize: either I'm losing my faculties (no comments please) or there aren't enough new cartridges getting reviewed these days. Or this is a very, very good cartridge. I imagine there are models that might equal it, but would be most surprised if there were any that could beat it at the price. If you're in the market for a serious needle, get on the waiting list now."

                                     

 

 

 

 

 

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