Digital BW, The Print

I've mentioned before on the list that I've had troubles with my 
Epson 1280 with MIS Ultratone 2 carts.  I've now had several 
instances where I changed cartridges, and either the greytone 
distribution or the "tint" of the prints changed. A while back, my 
Roarke curves workflow, which had worked for 2 years, just stopped 
working. Gray tones were skewed or missing. Both with the Epson 
driver and with QTR, which eliminates driver problems. 

Well, it just happened again.  This time I changed to a new grayscale 
cart, and my "neutral" workflow (EZ Slider method) turned distinctly 
bluish.  Changing the sliders to the "warm" settings does little to 
change this. 

And there are no clogs.  Every nozzle check I print comes out fine, 
but the prints come out bluish. The Sepia ink prints out lighter than 
it should on the Purge Pattern 6 file (compared to an earlier cart's 
printout of the same file).

I should also mention that when I print a Black-Only print, I get 
slight to moderate banding. But if I print the same image twice in a 
row, the banding will be in different places.

It's possible it's the cart, but I'm coming to the conclusion that 
it's my printer. Unless MIS has much worse quality control than their 
reputation, it's just happened too many times for it to have been 
MIS' fault every time. 

So here's my question:  If it is indeed the printer that's the 
problem, what are the chances that the problem would go away if I 
went back to the dye inks the printer was designed for?  In other 
words, supposed I went back to color dye inks on the 1280, and 
switched to UT-R2 grayscale inks in my R200?  If it worked, I could 
delay buying a 3800 for a while, and my finances would thank me.  If 
it didn't work, I'm out a hundred bucks of ink and some more 
frustration.

If there's a good chance that my problems are some long-term 
consequence of using pigment inks in a printer designed for dyes, I 
might chance the color/BW switch.  If it's more likely that my 1280 
is just slowly dying, maybe it's time to pull the plug.

--Peter