Banding in prints - Epson L18050 / ET-18100

[CPantaleon]

Hey guys and gals. I'd like to ask why the Epson L18050 / ET18100 is showing banding on dark areas in my prints. I've made sure the head & nozzles are aligned, did power cleaning, etc - still nada.
I'm printing on A3 glossy photo paper, and I made sure to turn on the thick papers & envelopes setting (I am on Mac). I also turned off Quiet Mode and Reduce Print Data Size, don't know if those options help. Bidirectional Printing is on. On the Epson Layout software, I made sure the quality is set to High. Under Colour Management, I've tried matching it with my monitor's color profile, and the default printer-managed colour. I've also tried printing using sRGB and Adobe RGB - none of those helped.

I have taken photos describing the issue, they can be found here:

https://imgur.com/a/OOKeP9o

When printing images with predominantly bright content, there is no issue. Only with dark areas this really becomes an issue. Is there any solution to this?

 

[UpAndPrinting]

I'm having a hard time seeing it. But have you physically tried cleaning the printhead? Particularly flushing the ink out with a printer syringe? Another way to partially clean the printhead would be to soak a paper towel in IPA and have it rest under the printhead for anywhere from 15 minutes to overnight.

We have a video of how to do it here:

The only difference is you would be applying the IPA/Windex to the paper towel completely before sliding the printhead carriage over it to rest on the solution.