Digital BW, The Print

Hi all.  New to the forum (and digital B&W printing in general).

Based on all of the great things I've read about the MIS EZ inks, I
recently bought a new Epson C88+ as well as the EZN cartridges (with
Photo black) and some Kirkland glossy paper.  I have read up on Paul
Roark's very nice detailed explanations of how to set the Epson driver
up for various papers with the C88.  I've experimented with a bunch of
different settings, using Paul's as a starting point.

All of the prints that have any significant dark areas seem to suffer
from a severe "splotching" of the black ink.  The problem seems to
occur in shadow areas where there are transitions from dark gray to
pure black.  The transitions are extremely rough, and the print seems
to go from medium-dark gray to pure black almost immediately.

Anybody else using this combination run into this?  I've tried a bunch
of different settings (brightness, contrast, different media type
selected, different DPI of file, etc.) and can't seem to get rid of
it.  I was starting to think it had something to do with the C88+ vs.
the C88, but it appears others on the forum have used these inks
successfully with the C88+.

Interestingly, I found that the Brightness settings Paul recommends
for the Kirkland paper were WAY too high.  I had to significantly
reduce the Brightness slider setting (down to -18 or -20) to get a
nice tonal balance.

Would be interested to hear if anyone else has had a similar
experience and what you did to fix it.

Thanks!