Ok ok... i know its not vintage or antique... but... Help?
 

So my original sewing machine is a Fantastic Plastic (A Brother LS1217), gifted to me by a dear friend. i had a love hate relationship with it from the start. It always gave me fits, then shed look at it and it would work fine again. I never understood why. I knew i was new to sewing but i didnt think i was doing anything wrong with it. After getting my second brother machine from another friend and thinking i needed special bobbins i wrote to Brother's customer support and figured while i was at it, id ask about the LS. Well they told me something i had completely over looked... Brother's use plastic bobbins! i had a metal singer bobbin in the machine currently! so i ran out to Walmart (Brother's suggestion!) and bought some plastic bobbins and then got too busy to test it.

I also found the manual on Brother's website. Tonight I took the machine apart (and by take apart i only took the front panel off per the manuals suggestion) cleaned her out, and oiled. (which appears to never have been done) wound up a plastic bobbin, threaded her up.... still wouldnt pick up the bobbin. changed the direction of the bobbin... still nothing. re-read the manual for a third time and finally got her to pick up the bobbin thread. then it wouldnt move the feed dogs... even though with no fabric it was moving just fine... huh. dummy me forget to lower the presser foot. so of course the fabric would just sit there. :P ok so then she was doing weird stitches. never realized it could do zigzag, and the stitch width was at like 0 or 1 so they were very very tiny zig's....

adjusted all that and she went off sewing just fine. up, down, down into a circle on a piece of scrap fabric. i was so excited! i finally beat it! i finally got her to sew! then i accidently sewed over a line, the thread got jammed up and snapped the upper thread!

Thought no sweat unthreaded, cleared the jam and then re threaded the machine.... only now the top thread is not passing through the tension at all. like the tension is completely jammed up and wont let the thread pass through like its supposed. whether its set at 0 or 9 it has the top thread gripped like grim death. and of course... unlike our beloved vintage and antique set ups i dont see a way to remove the tension spring at all...

...So any suggestions. Its not a huge loss if it is a loss... but i feel like it should work after all it was a gift. another friend had looked at it and said it was a "tension monster." now its literally eatting the thread. guess she was right. here i thought i was the dummy with the metal bobbin. :( any suggestions?

Congrats if you read through all of this!

Raise the pressure foot to unlock the tension discs and rethread.

Is the top thread hung up on the spool of thread? In a little slit to keep thread when not using it? I always put the spool with that slit facing the wheel.

doesnt matter if the presser foot is up or down the thread doesnt pass through... and the spool of thread is not snagging on anything.

Do you have a couple of pics? We might be able to see something collectively that you've missed by being too close to it....