Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message -----
From: <jeffm@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 5:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Piezotone SE vs. MIS FS: See Posted Images


>
>
> Martin Wesley wrote:
> >
(snip earlier)
>
> Martin & Co.
>
> After reading your reviews of the Cone Selenium inks and reading the
> claims of these new inks on the Cone Site I decided against my better
> judgment to give the inks a try. My first experience with the Original
> Cone inks a few years back was a big headache / disappointment. So.. my
> new Piezotone Selenium inks arrive for my 1280 in pre loaded carts. I
> follow all the instructions to the letter, using a set of $40 cleaning
> carts, I install the new inks and I get BLUE / CYAN prints! I call up
> Cone Tech support and they don't know what is wrong and don't ask many
> questions. The only answer they have for  me is that they want to send
> me another set of carts and cross their fingers that the next set will
> be fine. I install the next set and get the same BLUE / CYAN prints.
> They have since taken the inks in the 1280 carts off the market and are
> reformulating them. When they came out with these inks they stated that
> they now have unprecedented quality control and have done vast amounts
> of beta testing on these new wonder inks. So much for that!! NOW we are
> getting reports that the prints fade in a FEW MONTHS... let alone 50
> years. I have never in my life seen a company tout such product genius /
> superiority & charge for for such genius / superiority and deliver such
> crap! What are they thinking ??
>
> -Jeff

Jeff,

All I can say is that I am incredibly disappointed. I have waited for a 1
1/2 years for an ink set that had just the hue I wanted and the Selenium PT
out of the printer comes closer than anything else. As for the gap between
ConeTech's claims and the reality of their products I have to agree with
you. Often what I see as important improvements or basically good products
get so over hyped it seems like they wind up setting themselves up for a PR
disaster if a problem should occur.

At this point I think that the gray inks from the Selenium and Warm Neutral
PiezoTone ink sets are pretty good. Based on Paul's fade testing the best of
the  carbon pigment ink sets. The problem seems to lie with the black and
that is replaceable. I have run several test prints and wedges with the
MIS-FSN black replacing the PT black and this makes a nice ink set.  I miss
the extra dmax of the PT black and I will try the Generations 4 black but
the difference between the inks with the PT black and the FSN black are very
small. The FSN black also seems a better match with the paper profiles in
the Piezo driver.

As to the " blue" situation I don't know what the problem is. I have never
encountered it with my CIS so I will accept ConeTech's explanation about the
bad foam in the cartridges for now. At least they are offering to replace
the bad carts once they have some good ones.

This will sound like a wimp out but welcome to the world of grayscale ink
printing. Someday it will probably grow up but right now it is still
floundering around. As of today I would still recommend the PiezoTone inks
if you replace the black with MIS-FSN black or Gen 4 black, if you want to
get better Dmax and accept a shorter life. The MIS-FSN, MIS-VM and
MIS-Sepia-VM are known ink sets with no history of sudden failure to date.

Martin Wesley