At the risk of flying in the face of lots of experience...
I have been using a 4000 for years. After intermittent use, the heads did clog up, and surprisingly for not too much money, Epson sent a new one about a year and a half ago. Something about investment in a RIP and a whole bunch of ne ink cartridges swayed my thinking then. I don't think I'd do that now, but -
It prints just fine. There are the odd paper mismatch indications, but in general it chugs along pretty happy. I leave it sleep for a few weeks, it perks right up. The print quality is still very good, - although the last bit of BW prints had some metamorism due to fiddling with profiles.
Using a RIP - Imageprint, and boy, the printing and profiling is pretty easy these days. Fire up the RIP, drop the image on the template, pick what size, what profile, and it just prints fine. Of course, there is not a lot of paper experimentation - mostly Epson, and some Hahnemuhle, but it makes good results. An Epson 2400 was tried a few years ago - and with those tiny ink cartridges, it just was too much hassle and the quality wasn't any better. Worse - to get good BW it required fiddling ad infinitum with Epson's driver. No thank you.
Surely for intense, cutting edge, and really super work, a printer upgrade is in the work. But consider the RIP investment - it works quite nicely once it is set up. Easy to use and chugs along just fine. FWIW.