I have a second-hand 9900 which I acquired 2-3 years old in early 2011. It always had an issue with the VM channel with one empty spot during nozzle checks. For the most part, the one tiny void never was an issue but to keep the thing running, it would take a cleaning cycle or two regularly, especially printing canvas. If I let it sit for a few weeks, it usually took a cleaning or two to get it back into the grove.
Slowly, it got worse up until 2020 when the head finally gave up and I thought I may have a 4 pall-bearer corpse that would have to be dragged up a flight of stairs for disposal. I looked on eBay for a suitable replacement for a couple of weeks but then decided to call my Epson service expert who is an independent printer guru I've used for many years.
With his expertise, he convinced me that since I knew the history and idiosyncrasies and history of my printer that the best thing to do may be to simply replace the head and give it a cleaning.
Yep, it was expensive and took awhile to get the part and schedule a house call from his shop, but man, it was the best decision I could have made! Apparently, Epson has updated the head for the 9900 to a much more reliable quality (different part number than the original).
It took maybe two hours and a bunch of $$ for the head, cleaning, service call but it was a great decisition. I didn't have to deal with printer removal from my down-stairs studio which would take four people to move the thing then have to deal with what to do with nearly 300 pounds of what we call in California "Universal Waste" which is anything with an electrical cord and then dealing with either a new printer and new set of inks, profiles, set-up etc.
It may be worth checking with a repair shop to see if the solution to replacement may be a service call and parts replacement.
In talking with my expert this past week regarding a newer Epson printer I have in for service, his two issues with the newer large-format printers is that they are not of the same build quality (robustness) and the newer printers have just enough ink included to charge the printer, thus you've got to add a set of inks to the expense of a new printer to do more than just a small amount of printing once the printer is set up.
Two years ago, I had to "relinquish" my studio 3880 to my partner and so I replaced it with a P900. The P900 is a good little printer but mine had paper feeding issues from the start and I could only feed it a sheet or two at a time (luster) and with Exhibition Fiber Paper, every print suffered from long scratches from front to back. The work-around from tech support was to try the front feed to print on the EFP. But on my printer, it was jammed and I couldn't move the tray. Epson replaced my printer and a year later (a few weeks ago), started to spit ink spots on the margins and into the print on anything wider than 8.5 inch stock, then the paper feeder sucked in six sheets of EFP after it started having issues of even feeding a single sheet...
Though it's a newer printer and the prints are great, it's just not the same build-quality of the tank-like 3880...
