Hi Kinsey, welcome aboard.
There is a wide variety if Nelco deluxes's out there.. It looks like most are Japanese made starting just after WWII. If you could load a pic it would be nice.
probably not a special needle but it does need to be the right one and placed correctly and threaded properly. Those are hard to do by guess and the previous owner may not have known.
Hopefully a user will jump on here.