I have a Brother 1034D (about $200) I got about a year or so ago. Then Mr. Stitchnripper started having some health issues and after my first burst of using it a lot, I haven't used it or any of my other machines for a long time. Of course it would be great to have the Babylock auto threader, but that is about $5000, and for my purposes not necessary. I did take a serger class and did learn to rethread. You might want to do a search because we have discussed sergers recently and you might learn even more about them.