ABM International has read my mind and created the machine of my dreams! I have been longarm quilting for near 15 years and have owned many a machine in that time frame. The last one I had I had for 6 years. The time for an upgrade came and my machine was not eligible for any updates so I would have had to sell that and purchase the newest. That was not feasible; the price for the latest and greatest was out of my league. That’s when I found the Innova and knew that this was the machine for me! I could now have everything I wanted on a machine for a price I could actually afford! This is by far the best machine out there AND the best priced machine out there for the money! I would hurry and snag it before they realize what a goldmine they have and raise their prices!
I bought the Innova Pro 26" quilting system. I LOVE it, love, love love it! I hated the horizontal wheels on my former machine, always have, always will. I love everything about the Innova machine. I have such great control now and rarely even have to use rulers to track the lines and stitch in the ditch. I love all the visibility I gained, I love the adjustable lighting, I love the stitch quality and I love, love, LOVE the Idle speed option! I encourage you to check this system out. The price, the quality and the support are spot on! 24/7 tech support, that’s huge!! No more waiting for someone to get back to you at their convenience!! That means if I am in another country and run into a problem, I call them and they answer the phone! If I am quilting at 3 am on a weekend and run into trouble, they answer the phone! Huge, huge benefit!!
I bought the 26” machine and added the Pro stitch regulator, the fabric advance, electronic channel locks, the open toe foot and the micro drive handles. I am back to loving the process that goes along with quilting. The 18” head is just as wonderful, I really did have a hard time deciding! You can also select whatever table length you want. I chose the 10’ frame as I only quilt for myself and didn’t require anything longer than that.
The pivoting light is part of the head so that is included. I personally do not like overhead lights. I have 2 swing arms lights that are attached at each end of my table. I prefer those as added light. The 26" table is allot of table to reach over. Since I sit to quilt I would never utilize all that space but it is nice to have when I will need it. The 18" head should be fine. I guess that depends what type of quilting you will be doing for the most part. If you will be working from the back doing pantographs just make sure you don’t get something that is more than about 16" wide or you won’t be able to use it.
The channel locks are a personal preference. The manual channel locks are standard on either machine. However the manuals pretty much mean I have to get up off my drafting stool and go to the back of the table to lock them down. The electronics are on a remote and mean I press a button to lock them in or release them. Yes, you would use those when you want to stitch a straight line vertically or horizontally. To accomplish diagonal lines, you would use a ruler that is 1/4" think and a base installed to the head for stability. You could also add on the crosshatch ruler but I haven’t had the chance to see how that operates yet.
I owned another system about 6 years ago. Shortly after getting it setup it was not the machine for me. I tried hard to use it to the best of my ability but we never bonded. Here is what I recall not liking. I did not like the stitch regulator at all. I hated starting out with a long stitch! The stitch regulator is a very important feature to me and it has to be responsive to every slight move I make. I also constantly had to re-program the circuit boards as nothing stayed where it was supposed to for some reason. I was sent another head and experienced the same issues with that one as well. I also was not impressed with the stability of the head on the tracks as it kept lifting off the carriage. I also had issues with the fishing line setup on the table that runs the encoders. I disliked the noise level on my previous machine and never bonded with the wheel configuration but I did have a pretty stitch and made that work for me for the past 6 years. I am also very pleased with the wheels on the Innova, no more adjusting to get them just right; they are perfect right out of the gate! I am 100% in love with the Innova and have all the features I could wish for at least $6,000 less than my previous brand!! I highly recommend that you at least give it a test drive.
If you have not yet, I would recommend you join the Innova Longarm list on Yahoo. There is a plethora of users and information specific to our machine there.
Innova has some great information on their website and goes over each of the features of the Innova machines. At the bottom of this page there are some videos that I did recently showing how I use the great features on my personal show quilts.