I bought a used HQ Sweet Sixteen back in 2018- it's been a great quilter for me. I had spent several years trying out all the sit down quilters at the various quilt shows and had decided on several that I knew I'd be happy with. The Sweet Sixteen and the Babylock Tiara are basically the same machine and both were at the top of my list along with the Innova , the Juki and also the APQS George. It just happened that a used Sweet Sixteen in my budget showed up first.
I've not had any trouble with my Sweet Sixteen and have put over 8 million stitches on it since I got it. There's not much to go wrong with these machines and they're meant to go for many millions of stitches like the longarms in HQ's lineup. Unless it's a very early model, the Babylock will probably have most of the current bells and whistles, and is likely compatible with the new Insight stitch regulator table which is much better than the old true stitch tag along regulator. If you can try it out before making the final purchase, that would be great.
If you are buying it off of eBay, ask questions through the platform about whether it is working properly, why the person is selling it, has it ever been dropped, etc. And if possible ask them to make a short video showing it stitching. And get them to give you images showing the touch screens so you can see number of stitches on it, the software and firmware numbers and make sure all the touch screens work. If you ask those kinds of questions through the eBay platform and they answer on the platform that information becomes part of the ad and is helpful in getting problems resolved should any arise.
Rob
Last edited by rryder; 12-18-2022 at 08:29 AM.