Guys, I think you are right. The head is failing. I've been trying to clear the pattern again by printing and cleaning, but so far, it *always* improves a bit but then snaps back to the starting point. Damnit. :-(
What to do now? I don't know. It's a shame because I'm a bit in love with this printer. Now I can't imagine going back to my cute little Pixma Pro 9500 MK II.
A new head is around 800€ here, and I am pretty confident I could install it myself. I have the Service Program and I know where to enter the new head ID. But the question is... is it worth it?
I see the new P-5000 is currently costing around 2000€. Sure that's a big load of money.... Does anybody know how reliable these are? Is the clogging still the dreading issue or did they improve the head designs? I don't want to spend 2K on a new printer and then it keeps on clogging, clogging, clogging. Surely, I am not a heavy user but I'm also not going to let it sit idle for more than a few days. I have stuff to print on a regular basis but not daily.
Different thought I have:
Would it be possible to convert it to an 8-color-printer somehow? All other channels are working, wouldn't it be possible to ditch the orange, fill the cart with black and *somehow* tell the printing software that all the blacks are orange now (you know, orange is the new black anyway
)? Yeah, I know that's maybe a pain in the butt to do but it hurts my heart to throw away a perfectly nice printer just because of those few failing nozzles....