The only reason I've ever used a thread/spool holder that wasn't on my machine was if the spool was oversized or the thread was "squirrley" (kind of curly). Squirrley threads keep unthreading itself because it is too stiff to relax. Most of those are metallics or the nylon invisible thread and I want to stretch and straighten them out a bit so that they fed through the machine better.) I'm not so sure that the way they come off the spool is as important as the texture of the thread itself.