I love my Elna, a few months back I got a Elna 7300 pro quilting Queen machine and I absolutely love it. the same thing was happening to me. I was sewing a black and my brother sewing machine went "bang bang ,klunk,klunk" and just died.
Our local dealer gave me a awesome price on my new machine so I could not resist.
I have a Brother PE 700II embroidery machine also. I find I like having one machine for embroidery and while I have something embroidering I can be sewing on the other machine.. I am a multi-tasking person :)
Congratulations on the new machine :)