# Amaya Bravo vs Brother PR-650



## Mtnview (Nov 5, 2009)

I have seen the Melco Amaya Bravo listed on a few sites for around $8k but haven't verified that with a rep yet. I called our local Brother dealer and asked the price of the PR-650 and was told it was $10k. Bravo has 16 needles and PR-650 has six. Is the Brother that much better than the Amaya Bravo to pay 2 grand more for 10 fewer needles?


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## sassystitches (Sep 16, 2010)

Mtnview said:


> I have seen the Melco Amaya Bravo listed on a few sites for around $8k but haven't verified that with a rep yet. I called our local Brother dealer and asked the price of the PR-650 and was told it was $10k. Bravo has 16 needles and PR-650 has six. Is the Brother that much better than the Amaya Bravo to pay 2 grand more for 10 fewer needles?


The PR-650 shouldn't be $10k. I will send you a PM. 

As for the Bravo I was wondering the same things and can't find many people talking about it. I found a comparison of the Bravo vs the XTS on their site here:

AMAYA HTML Help Technical Manual


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## Daddyof4 (Aug 23, 2011)

The Bravo is a great machine. The software it comes with is absolute junk. It looks like something my granddaughter made on HP Paint and doesn't have enough features to do what I've needed. The only difference between the Bravo and the Amaya xts is the software, the machines are identical. For the money I would choose a Melco but I would go for the Amaya XTS just to have adequate software. If you choose the Bravo you will be very, very upset about the limitations of the included software.


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## sassystitches (Sep 16, 2010)

Daddyof4 said:


> The Bravo is a great machine. The software it comes with is absolute junk. It looks like something my granddaughter made on HP Paint and doesn't have enough features to do what I've needed. The only difference between the Bravo and the Amaya xts is the software, the machines are identical. For the money I would choose a Melco but I would go for the Amaya XTS just to have adequate software. If you choose the Bravo you will be very, very upset about the limitations of the included software.


Can you elaborate on the software? Are you referring to the digitizing software or the software that controls the machine? If you already used another digitizing software and only need the machine, is the Bravo software adequate just to operate the machine properly?


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## A1WHITES (Nov 19, 2011)

I have a babylock 10 needle and it works great. I look at the six needle but I knew that it would not be long before I would need to upgrade.


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## Daddyof4 (Aug 23, 2011)

sassystitches said:


> Can you elaborate on the software? Are you referring to the digitizing software or the software that controls the machine? If you already used another digitizing software and only need the machine, is the Bravo software adequate just to operate the machine properly?


The Bravo comes with Design Shop v 9 and with Amaya OS Lite. The Design Shop is a basic design software where you do most of your editing and such. The OS Lite is the operations software. The OS Lite software is harder to learn and doesn't have enough options on the menus. I spend a lot of time going back and forth between the two softwares adjusting and readjusting designs. A better choice for Melco would have been to incorporate the design and operations software together into one program and to make the design setup much easier to use.

So in answer to your question...yes it will run the machine but expect to waste a lot of time trying to figure out the color sequences. Also when you want to embroider a name you have to make the letters different colors to prevent the OS LIte from considering the whole name as one design and putting jump stitches between each letter to be cut out later. It's a nightmare to run applique designs. 

Simple features are made more difficult with the Amaya OS Lite software. If i had the money i would go with the Amaya XTS machine. I'm not even sure why Melco offers the Bravo given how awful the operations software is.


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## sassystitches (Sep 16, 2010)

Hmmm, those couple of examples are typical of a commercial machine and the jumps I would think are implemented according to the design. Usually you determine in your digitizing software if you want a trim in a certain place or you just want to jump to the next letter. Surely it isn't ignoring these instructions. Commercial machines have no concept of color, you need to assign the "color 1" in the design to needle x and have to do that for each color change within the design. Both of those things you are describing are things that are normal to us and both we actually prefer. We never used the colors built into the Brother machine. We just always used DST which didn't have the color information anyway...


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## Daddyof4 (Aug 23, 2011)

sassystitches said:


> Hmmm, those couple of examples are typical of a commercial machine and the jumps I would think are implemented according to the design. Usually you determine in your digitizing software if you want a trim in a certain place or you just want to jump to the next letter. Surely it isn't ignoring these instructions. Commercial machines have no concept of color, you need to assign the "color 1" in the design to needle x and have to do that for each color change within the design. Both of those things you are describing are things that are normal to us and both we actually prefer. We never used the colors built into the Brother machine. We just always used DST which didn't have the color information anyway...


Likely we are just having the usual learning curve. The Melco just runs fast and does great designs so I really want to get to the same point I am with the PE-1000 so I can really be fair. So far both machines have some really good points and a few drawbacks.


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