Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this little guy as a back up for my Singer Quantum 7350. I'm sew a lot of unusual fabrics and am more than a little hard on sewing machines. My daily sewing projects include costuming (vinyl, fur, etc); household uses (curtains, bedding); and formal wear. It never fails that when I'm approaching a deadline on a big project my sewing machine decides it needs to pay a visit to my friendly neighborhood sewing repair shop for a tuneup. It's about 10 years old now and if you saw what I put it through, you'd understand why. I've also dropped it twice. I will admit, I don't actually expect this Singer to be a 'heavy-duty' machine. Not my definition of heavy-duty anyway. Not for this price. What I do expect is something that will be reliable, no frills, and hold up to my abuse. I think that's what I've got. It has only been three days and I have already made a monk's robe and caught up on my minor repair work. The needle had to be changed immediately. I don't know why, but sewing machines always seem to come with sub par, blunt needles. Once I had, it was humming along smoothly in minutes. It threads just like the other two Singers I've owned and sews a nice straight, tight stitch. It's also not as loud as some of the other reviews have said, but that may be just because I've always tended to go for the more basic, utilitarian models rather than fancy electronics and 100 stitch patterns that I'll never use and am used to a little noise when I sew. All in all, I'm very pleased so far. I'll update this review if that changes! Happy sewing ladies and gents. UPDATE (August 29th 2011): I might have to eat my words about this not really being 'heavy duty.' I sewed quite a bit of light to medium weight leather this past weekend and it didn't so much as hiccup. Bravo Singer! (Be sure to use the right type of needles if you plan on doing this. Universal needles will not perform well with leather no matter how tough the machine. :))