Abstract: A lower needle adapter has lower, resilient contact needles and an upper needle adapter has upper, resilient contact needles which are provided for contacting of both sides of component equipped printed circuit boards. Defined contacting conditions having correspondingly high contact reliabilities are achieved in that the printed circuit boards are pressed against opposite pressure rams arranged in non-yielding fashion, being pressed thereagainst by resiliently fashioned pressure rams. When resilient, upper pressure rams are used to press the printed circuit boards against lower pressure rams which are adjustable in height in two stages, then a both-sided, two-stage contacting can be realized in a simple way with corresponding, additional, shorter lower and upper contact needles.