Paul,
Yes I did a year ago and rejected it. VFA takes more ink and more ink means a deeper black. It also has to do with profiles. The Imageprint profiles are simply better than the Epson ones. Imageprint mixes all the colors in such a way as to maximise nuetrality and dmax . It just works better than Epsons and Cones. I spent the summer testing my setup against the Art Institutes extensive Cone (both blacks) setup because I wanted to do some big prints and I could never get a better print on anything that matched my setup with VFA. So for my exhibit I settled on smaller prints.

If you do your paper testing with VFA profiles on every mat paper regardless of what that paper is you can see the black potential because VFA accepts the most ink and therefore the profile lays down the most ink. The coating they use is proprietary and only used on EM and VFA. The base for VFA is bought from-shoot I can'i remember the name-and Epson dips it in their own coating. The claim that Epson makes about VFA having the best dmax is true. Nothing else gets there. Unfortunately it is a heavily textured paper and only goes up to 13x19. If it were larger I would do everything on it. I don't mind the textyure as I am not trying to mimic silver prints. I want an ink on art paper look, like a lithograph. But to me dmax and paper base is everything!!!!! When it comes to print richness.

These Crane papers are getting there though. These may be a breakthrough