Epson Stylus C88+ regularly spaced horizontal lines - not banding

[alrunemara]

I have an Epson Stylus C88+ that has regular horizontal black lines (only black) in its prints. I've found that setting the quality option to "best photo" causes the lines to appear at exactly 1 mm apart, and changing this to "text" causes the lines to show up less often but still typically regularly spaced. What is odd is that areas of the prints that are black still print in very good quality; it's just that these lines are literally covering the page. I have tried removing and reinstalling the driver and cleaning and aligning the print heads multiple times, including manually cleaning the print heads with distilled water pushed through via a syringe as a last ditch effort. The printer cartridges are authentic Epson cartridges. I'm assuming the black print head is bad, but was hoping someone else would have another idea.