Digital BW, The Print

Hi everyone, 

I'd like to ask for your feedback on choosing a B/W printer. 

Background: I have purchased a refurbished 1280 from Epson over a 
year ago, with UT2 inks from MIS. This was my first attempt to making 
the leap from darkroom to digital printing. Unfortunately I was never 
able to make this solution work, I constantly got lines across my 
prints, but only with the MIS inks, not the stock Epson ones. I'm not 
faulting the ink, maybe it was my refurb'ed printer. But after 
countless hours of research and troubleshooting (removing pizza 
wheels, etc) I've given up in dissapointment. I should say that I 
would only print maybe once a week to a few times per month. 

I am now on a new quest, this time I thought I won't cut corners with 
refurbished printers, etc, so I've been looking at the Epson R2400 
and the Canon PIXMA Pro 9500. Not because I necessarily need an A3 
printer, but because smaller ones don't come equipped with separate 
grey cartridge. With current rebates they can be had for under $600. 
After many hours of reading reviews, I am leaning towards the 9500 as 
that seems to have better d-max (and the fact that I'm a EOS D30 
user). Though the Epson has 3 black/grey inks vs only 2 for the Canon.

So my questions are:
1. has anyone compared prints from these two printers (R2400 & PIXMA 
Pro 9500), or has any feedback on choosing one vs the other?

2. has anyone compared print quality between one of the above 
printers, and Roark's workflow with the Epson 800/1800?

Thanks,
Robert.