Amphenol BERGSTIK II 2.54mm Pin Header — Unshrouded Through-Hole & SMT Interconnects

The BERGSTIK II family is Amphenol's workhorse 2.54 mm (0.100") pitch pin header line — unshrouded, single- and double-row headers used wherever you need a reliable, no-frills board-to-board or wire-to-board connection that does not require polarization or positive latching. These are the rectangular headers you reach for when a standard 0.1" header strip does the job, and you care about consistency across production runs rather than gambling on no-name equivalents with variable plating thickness.

The series spans 457 variants covering through-hole (solder tail and press-fit), surface-mount, and mixed-orientation configurations. You get the full combinatorial matrix: vertical and right-angle, single-row (1x2 through 1x40) and dual-row (2x2 through 2x40), with stack heights from roughly 5 mm to over 20 mm depending on insulator and post length.

Typical Applications

Board-to-board mezzanine stacking in industrial controllers, PLC backplanes, and motor-drive signal routing are the bread-and-butter use cases. You will also find BERGSTIK II headers on debug/programming headers across embedded designs — JTAG, SWD, and UART breakout pins — because the 0.1" pitch mates with standard IDC ribbon-cable sockets and Dupont-style jumper wires. In ATE (automated test equipment) fixtures, the through-hole variants survive repeated mating cycles that would lift pads on SMT-only alternatives.

Compared to Amphenol's own Minitek series, BERGSTIK II gives up the polarization and high-cycle latching in exchange for a wider position-count range and lower per-position cost. If you need keyed mating or >500-cycle durability, look at Minitek; if you need basic 0.1" connectivity across 2–80 positions where cost and availability drive the decision, BERGSTIK II is the natural pick.

Key Specifications

How to Select a Variant

Start with the mechanical constraints: vertical or right-angle, single or double row, and the exact position count. The position count is not always a strict pin count — pay attention to whether the catalog variant uses continuous pin numbering or leaves unloaded positions for polarization by omission.

Plating is the next fork. Gold flash is fine for low-cycle, benign-environment lab use and one-time programming headers. Selective gold (0.76 µm on the mating area, tin on the solder tail) is what you want for production equipment that sees field cycling, condensation, or mild vibration. Tin-only keeps cost down for consumer goods that get assembled once and never touched again, but watch the 125 °C ceiling.

Tail length is the third dial. Through-hole variants ship in multiple tail lengths; pick one that gives you at least 1.5 mm protrusion through the board for a proper solder fillet in wave or selective-solder processes. For SMT, confirm coplanarity tolerance against your stencil thickness — 0.15 mm solder paste deposit is a safe starting point for the gull-wing leads.

Procurement & Availability

Amphenol positions BERGSTIK II as a commodity interconnect — these headers are manufactured in volume across multiple fabs, and the 457 variants in this catalog do not represent every tail-length and plating combo. If you cannot find the exact configuration through distribution, check whether an alternate tail length or plating option in the same position count and row configuration meets your requirements. Lead times on non-stocked variants typically run 6–10 weeks, shorter than the 12–16 weeks common for custom connector tooling because the base insulator and contact tooling is already amortized. Authorized distributors carry roughly 60–70% of the catalog on shelf at any time; the rest are assemble-to-order from standard components.