I have the Janome 7700 and there is no stitch regulator for it that I am aware of. However, one of the reasons I got it was for its wonderful FMQing. I upgraded from a Janome 6600, which I also was able to FMQ on but only after a lot of fiddling. The 7700 has auto tension and a wonderful foot that rests just on the quilt sandwich. I've not had to make any adjustments to tension, but if you should need to you can override the auto tension.
I think you do need a certain amount of patience and a significant number of practice hours on any domestic machine to master FMQ, and I don't think you'll find any way around that.
Have you thought of getting a sit down Sweet 16?