Digital BW, The Print

I hear you.  I am facing the same problem.

I have sat on the sidelines for 2 years, scarred off by clogging, banding etc. 
with the original Piezo inks.  Then, the prospect of the 2200 seemed like it 
might be a perfect solution to produce neutral B/W prints, toned prints, and 
color with one machine.  The problem with the 2200 remains:
1)metamerism (better than prev. Epson printers, but still there)
2) longevity relative to the piezo inks
3) durability (matte black apparently can rub off art papers fairly easily)
4) print quality (under a loupe still not equal to piezo; tonal separation etc.)

Even with custom profiles, or GB software most of  these problems remain.  
Then, came the prospect of the 2200 with Imageprint 5.0. 

 Hopefully, this RIP may provide what we both want: a printer than can 
produce quality neutral, or toned B/W prints or color, without the problem of 
metamerism.  That is, if we believe the excitement of the digitaldog.  Problem 
is, the mac software is apparently still buggy and OS X solutions are pending.  
As well, the 2200 driver is still be worked on.  So we have to wait for a while. 
Another big problem is that it is $495 on top of the cost of the 2200.  Maybe, 
this could be bundled in the future according to Andy.  It would be nice.

Then, yesterday I received my PiezoTone samples images in the mail and 
they are great.  Much better than anything I have seen from the 2200 so far.  
But, if I go that route, I can't do arbitrary toning etc.  Plus, I would need a 
separate color printer.  There is no perfect solution ... yet.  I am happy to wait 
for the next month to watch this Imageprint story.  But, I am starting to sway 
towards the 1280 with PiezoTones.  Then, I can't decide which gray tone 
selenium vs. warm neutral.  Even if I go this route, some are still advocating 
that Imageprint 5.0 is a better driver for the hextone B/W inks than the piezo 
plugin.  Interestingly, as I pointed out this morning, this software is now for 
sale on inkjetmall.   This is getting to complicated.  I am going to go home and 
open some good red wine.

By the way,  I don't really see the magenta, eggplant, etc in my selenium print 
sample that much.  Perhaps the sample image doesn't have enough midtones 
to see these colors.  But, the blacks are significantly better than the first 
sample I ever got from inkjet mall a few years ago with the sundance inks.  It is 
night and day.  

I didn't answer your question, but may have left more questions unanswered.