Yesterday I took my Pfaff Performance 5.0 in for maintance/cleaning and was looking around shop at machines as I have given thought to purchasing a new machine. I was talking to sales person about different machines and saw the Allegro and sat down to play with it. It was set to FMQ and it sewed great with no problems and then we tried to change it to regular sewing and could not get the feed dogs to come back up. We tried the lever in back several times, read the manual on feed dogs and trouble shooting and they would not lift up. She even called the store manager over and he tried a couple of times and just wasn't happening. So don't think the Allegro is on my list anymore. Did look at the Baby Lock Soprano which I liked but had to go before I looked at Janome machines so will look at when I go back to pick up my machine.