Printing on epson cold press bright paper with Epson 2200 in Photoshop CS5

Question

The printer is old. Epson chooses neither to support it, nor does it seem to have anyone in their tech support knowledgeable about paper profiles. The paper is the whitest of white, and a bit thicker and stiffer than any of the usual watercolor papers i have been using for years by the likes of Hannemuele and Arches.  The profile that came with this paper is actually made for an Epson 3880 printer, I suspect because the 2200 is no longer supported by Epson.
Usually with any new unsupported paper, I'll experiment within the photoshop print and profile settings, and eventually jerryrig something that looks decent. However, this particular paper is quite expensive, so before I waste a bunch of it, I thought maybe someone on this forum could offer some advise. I have tried printing with it only once so far, using the Apple (1998) profile with Photoshop in charge of printing. The result was that it "almost" works, except the red or oranges won't print at all, and instead, they both print as yellow. I also noticed that the paper ran through the printer much too quickly, as if it wasn't printing all of it.
Immediately after this test, I ran my usual watercolor paper through the printer with the same settings. it printed true, AND, significantly, it took 3 times as long to get the paper all the way through the printer.
Can someone here offer me any guidance? My own next (blind) choice would be to try the Epson 3880 profile that's made for this 13X19 inch paper, and also let the printer control the colors. But what about all the other settings? blackpoint? colormetric? all that stuff. Any help is much appreciated.
One other thing. Even with this throw-away test print, i can tell that the EWpson cold press bright is something special. Both the detail and the color (those colors that were true) were very deep indeed.

Answer 1

Well, my Epson 2200 may be old but it normally does a fantastic job on any paper I throw at it—provided the target profile is accurate and tailored for your particular unit.
It's not clear to me who supplied the target profile you are using to print on that Epson Cold Press Bright Paper, but I'm unaware of of Epson ever having offered a target profile specifiocally for using that paper on the 2200.
Frankly, I never even attempt to use any given photographic paper on my 2200 for which I don't have a custom profile for that specific combination of paper, ink and exact printer model.
My advise is to have a professionally generated profile made by one of the several excellent commercial profiling services that send you one or more target images to print on your printer and then you sent them your prints for them to generate the specific profile by using the best available  colorimeter.
Using a profile made for a different printer model borders on the absurd, in my opinion.  The least I would accept is a standard profile made by the paper manufacturer on a range of units of that specific printer model, and I would still not be as comfortable as with a specific profile derived from target-image prints made for my particular 2200 unit.
The prices for this service vary widely from one service outfit to another one, and some are very reasonable (try Inkjetart<===click*  for the $25 price range, for instance).  In most instances, it can be considerably cheaper than the amount of wasted ink and paper from repeated and futile trial-and-error attempts to get an optimal print from your 2200.
* I have no connection to Inkjetart whatsoever,