Fixed banding in Epson R1800!!!

Like several others on here, I have been using an Epson R1800 for many years and I have been very happy with the output. There have been a few instances over the life of the printer where I, also like many others here, began to have banding issues with the prints. I tried everything including print head realignments (both automatic and manual) head cleanings, etc. I'm pretty sure that all I accomplished was wasting a LOT of very expensive ink. I had pretty much come to the conclusion that my beloved R1800 was headed to the dumpster and I was going to be ordering the R3000 before the $300 rebate ended in December.

Well, I needed to make some prints for a shoot I had done and sure enough, the banding was as bad as ever. In my last ditch effort to fix this, I decided I was going to burn through my remaining cache of ink cartridges until I fixed it. And then came my discovery...

While checking every possible solution other than replacing or removing and cleaning the print head, I came across one thing I had not tried. In the Epson Properties page (Advanced, not Basic) there is an option to check for "High Speed" which "enables fast, bidirectional printing." I unchecked it for the first time since buying this printer years ago and voila, NO MORE BANDING!!!

It was literally instantaneous. The very next print was perfect. I've since printed 15-20 prints and not had even the slightest hint of banding. I could not be more excited. Now, I will still be ordering an R3000, I just can't pass up that printer for a final price of $499, but I will be keeping my venerable R1800 as a backup.

So the short of this is, for all of you who have had banding issues with your R1800, and I know there are a lot of you, simply try this:

TURN OFF THE "HIGH SPEED" OPTION!!!

Hope this works for everyone else as well as it did for me.

phxflyboy