Thanks great if it’s a walking foot one. I forgot to say, I agree that the no reverse is a bit annoying on these machines. In a table they are going for a fair bit of money in UK on ebay. Like $700.
I wanted to say that there seem to be a lot of Dürkopp-Adler used upholstery machines for sale at the moment in UK. The N291. For UK based people this is relevant to the thread topic. I wonder if some big setee (sofa) factory went out of business or something? A local supplier near me had around 10 of them! I got a good cash price on one for an auto upholstery job I am doing. They aren’t super cheap, like 1000£-2000£ but really geared for upholstery. I was put off by the programmable stitch controller for factory use as well as the necessity to use an air compressor for the foot lift. All this stuff just seemed like more to go wrong and especially to go wrong and be far out of my ability to sort out myself. In the end I was desperate and no older more straight forward machines like Pfaff were around or at least only weaker, knackered old ones. I went for it in the end and despite the steep learning curve and some trouble with the tensioning and auto thread cut feature not working (despite a trip back to the supplier for adjustment by the engineer), it has been a good machine to use. It is the heaviest machine I have ever experienced! I can’t move it in my own and you can’t even just take the head off for all the air lines, oil lines and computer control cables... That being said it is a really top quality German specialised machine which there seems to be a glut of right now in UK so maybe other people can take advantage of this and get one for a good price as well. Another thing though is the cost of parts even bobbins or presser feet are really expensive. Even Chinese’y ones are expensive. This has to be factored in to any decision I guess. I’m not sure about compatibility with other makers machines presser feet. Does anyone know about this? It would be great if there was a brother or seiko or juki machine that uses the same feet. Here are some links to some on ebay for example:
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre ... 2900549160
On looking for links I think I answered my own question about where these machines came from! Check out the screen shot of the online auction from last summer: