Digital BW, The Print

I've recently scrapped my wet darkroom since my Photoshop skills are 
lightyears ahead of my darkroom skills, but my prints so far have 
been far from pleasing. Up till now the only things I've printed 
digitally have been "digital art" images, which have (or so I always 
thought) been fine. Trying to get a print of a "photograph" seems to 
be much more difficult than I thought it would be. I use an Epson 
Stylus Photo 1200 w/MIS archival color CFS. My paper of choice is 
Epson Heavyweight Matte. With Epson inks my b&w prints came out 
somewhat posterized, and deep shadow areas were splotchy and ugly. 
Now that I've switched over to the MIS ink the results have gone from 
bad to worse. One particular image, hard side lighting and contrasty, 
prints horribly posterized. I bought a pack of Somerset Photo 
Enhanced Velvet to try out and the tests have been ugly as sin.

I've seen posts by various people in various places about getting 
wonderful results with their 1200's and even EX's, which tells me 
that I must be doing something dreadfully wrong somewhere. I had 
limited success, with Epson inks, with bumping the black point about 
25% in each color channel with curves...less splotching in the 
shadows but the prints were flat. It doesn't seem to work quite as 
well with the MIS inks. My photos are mainly portraits and nudes shot 
in a studio.

Can anyone help a guy out and give me some advice, or even just a 
starting point? All I really want is a smooth tonal range in my 
photos. I thought I knew what I was doing but I see now that isn't 
the case.

Bob