I have been an observer on this board for a couple of years now, never really participating until today. However, I wanted to share with you that I have a Janome 1100SE and absolutely love the machine, however, I have experienced problems with the needle threader not threading, and found that the thread that I used made a big difference. There was one thread that I used that would not work with the self threader. Check with different threads. Good Luck.
Too bad you were closer to my area, my local quilt shop is also a Janome dealer, and they can't do enough when I can in a bind with my machine. Telephone support is great!