cartridge match advice

The Bluepoint carts have been around a long time. Made by Excel, IIRC. If you know you like them then they are a good bet for you. From what I can tell the Evo series was discontinued and now Sumiko is mainly selling the Songbird as a replacement. They still have the Blackbird which may be similar to the Evo series. IIRC the BB comes in either high or low output.

The Artist moving magnet cart looks like a typical CA MM job where they are scant on detailed info but are really just using an AT VM95 or 95 series generator with "elliptical" diamond then stick it in a wood or metal outer shell. My guess it is a cheaper bonded diamond, since they don't mention that it is nude. If it were they'd be harping on that fact. I'd rather just buy a cart direct from AT so you know exactly what you are getting.

In terms of the arm could you be more specific? Looks like CA makes more than one carbon fiber arm. There is the standard one which is 9g and the "Satisfy" which is 7g effective mass. They have more arms still. I would choose a fairly compliant cart on the lighter one. On the 9g arm you could go either way, but I'd probably avoid any cart with a very stiff suspension when it comes to either of these arms.

This one?

Effective mass is 7g.

HiFiForMetal wrote: Yes the blue point is still made, they now have it in  A covered aluminum body and have damped the resonances  More so it’s the same old cart as the EVOiii but With better dampening. I’m afraid the blackbird is no more I wanted that cart for a long time about 17 years ago.  And I’m not sure I like the songbird.

OK. Odds are it's not that much different than whatever they were selling years ago with the same Excel generator. If you know you like the cart already, then it should be a safe purchase.

HiFiForMetal wrote: I think the clear audio artist cart is made by them with AT Parts and it could be a VM95 generator but they wind  Their own coils there so my guess is they are modifying it  Significantly and of course adding an ebony shell,

A simple test with a multimeter to measure resistance and inductance would tell the truth. As for "winding their own coils", with an MM cart, that is highly unlikely. Virtually no one hand winds MM carts or high output MI carts because there are too many winds of coil to do. The process is usually automated and done on a machine. Of course dealer/salespeople will talk a lot of bunk so maybe that is where you heard that. I wouldn't buy it for a second. LOMC carts are a different story and usually have to have the coils hand wound. Of course those have very few turns of wire in the coils. 

As for CA's "mods" when the carts have been taken apart and the diamonds put on a microscope the truth is revealed. Their basic MM carts are nothing special and have cheap diamonds on them. The higher end ones usually have much better diamonds and cantilevers but they are often murky about what you get. Lot of marketing talk and bunk in the cart world with very few companies actually making cartridges, cantilevers, and diamonds at the OEM level.

HiFiForMetal wrote: The current bluepoint iii does look a lot like an Umami Blue by Excel, I think though the Bluepoint may be better

Excel is the OEM for those Sumiko HOMCs. Sumiko is just a brand name/marketing company. Excel makes MC carts for several brands and has for decades.

HiFiForMetal wrote: I was just wondering if the Clearaudio  Artist was particularly good with A graham Slee phono stage  Since obviously Graham’s stages do miracles  With moving magnets.

The Artist will work. Not a particularly good value in my book for the reasons stated. If you want an alternative I would be looking at the AT VM500/700 series, Ortofon OM or 2M series, maybe Nagaoka. Any of those should match well with your CA tonearm. The AT 500/700s will be trickier to load electrically for the best frequency response...I recommend short low capacitance phono cables and parallel resistive loading for those.

The Blue Point will also work. Western compliance at 10Hz will be much higher than the Japanese 100Hz spec as seen in tests done years ago by Miller Audio Research...