Yup, the 400 and 500 machines are not great at FMQing. Honestly, and this is coming from someone who FMQ's a lot of many different types of machines, it's much easier to just use a different machine for this task. It's simply not worth the efforts and dealing with the raised plate is not enjoyable. I LOVE the 400 and 500 machines for straight quilting with a walking foot, but they're just not engineered to be good at FMQing. The raised plate and horizontal bobbin don't play well with each other! I keep my 400 for general sewing, piecing and straight quilting and use one of my other 20 machines for FMQing. Don't throw it out the window, but don't expect it to do an amazing job at FMQing, because you'll be spinning your wheels:>