BC Vibrance Rag gives beautiful prints on our Epson 4900 and 9900 machines. As for whether you should buy one of those machines, that's a bigger question than Vibrance Rag results naturally.
You sure you've worked through the surface scratch issue, meaning ruled out head strikes and all the things to do on your machines to treat head strikes?
My contact at Breathing Color suggests that Vibrance Rag may require reformulation in the near future. The BC sales consultant admitted that the (high) Vibrance Rag price is viewed by the BC company as an explanation for below-predicted sales of that paper. I believe, based upon my conversation, that Vibrance Rag may be replaced my another paper at lower cost at some point. Probably wouldn't replace a printer based upon using that particular paper formulation. Just a thought.
John Caldwell