I selected profile in ColorSync utility under devices / printers and then selected the profile I had put into the library from my old mac.
Aha! I see what you're doing now. I'm so used to the app I use having full ColorSync control built in that I've never looked to see what you could do in the ColorSync Utility. Heck, as far as I know, what you did has been there since the beginning of OS X, though I didn't move to OS X until 10.3.x.
As you know, in OS 9, you could only set a few input and output profiles globally with the ColorSync Utility. OS X has taken that function way beyond OS 9 and allows you to assign a profile to each individual device. In OS 9, the global settings rarely worked for non ColorSync aware apps since they simply wouldn't pick them up. But you've proved that it works in OS X by getting a different result after assigning an output profile to your printer in the ColorSync Utility. Even though the app you're using (Word) has no color controls at all.
Here's the basic rules for using ColorSync when printing:
1) Have a proper monitor profile loaded in the Display section of the System Preferences.
2) Select the printer profile for the paper you're using.
3) (The biggie!) Apply ColorSync only
ONCE!
I mention the last in particular since you may have unknowingly applied it twice (colors were too light) in your post above. That would have happened because you assigned the profile to the device in the ColorSync Utility. Printing out of Word caused the OS to convert your monitor profile to the color space of the output profile assigned to your printer in the ColorSync Utility. But then the output profile was applied a second time because you clicked the "ColorSync" radio button under the "Printer Color Management" drop down setting of the Epson print driver.
So what you should try is this when printing from Word:
1) When Word's print dialogue comes up, go to the "Print Settings" choice of the drop down menu first. Choose "Plain Paper". Use either "Automatic" or the "Advanced Settings" radio button to choose your detail level.
Don't use the "Custom" button. There's a resulting drop down menu that allows you to choose ColorSync. If you do that, you'll be applying ColorSync to the output twice.
2) Go to the "Printer Color Management" section of the print dialogue and select the radio button for "Off (No Color Adjustment)". You want to do this since OS X is going to be handling the ColorSync conversion since you assigned your profile directly to the printer there. If you were to use the "ColorSync" radio button in this section, it would be applied a second time.
3) Click "Print".
How does that work?
