20 July 2011

Luminus LEDs power Philips’ luminaires at Grand Ole Opry

Luminus Devices Inc of Billerica, MA, USA, which manufactures PhlatLight (photonic lattice) LEDs for illumination applications, says that the Philips Vari-Lite VLX Wash luminaires, powered by its CBM-380 color mix LED, are at the heart of the replacement lighting rig installed recently at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville. The new rig needed to not only replace the flood-damaged rig, but also to be flexible enough to light a wide variety of stage performances and TV broadcasts yet mobile enough to make the Opry’s seasonal move for its Winter Series performances.

Luminus says that lighting designers prefer the VLX Wash for a variety of reasons: the deep and rich colors that come from the LED source (unmatched by any other LED wash available, it is claimed), the fact they are more powerful, the special effects that can now be achieved, the drastically reduced maintenance, the increased efficiency, and the reliability. The artistic freedom a VLX Wash enables earned Kevin Adams a Tony Award in Lighting Design for the Broadway production American Idiot. He credits the VLX fixtures for being “bright” and for reacting quickly and making “saturated light look great”. Also, besides its true LED white, the VLX can strobe between multiple colors faster than the eye can perceive.

“Our lighting rig is working roughly 40 hours per week, 160 hours per month, or 1920 hours per year,” says Eric Abbott, head electrician of American Idiot. “With a normal wash fixture in a typical Broadway rig, you have to swap out a fixture once or twice a month for various issues, but it took us 9 months to touch our first VLX Wash, because there is no bulb in it and the amount of heat generated is significantly less than other moving lights,” he adds. “Since the vital parts of the VLX are protected inside as a self-contained unit, and with minimal fans that may bring in dust or debris, we spend significantly less time per light than with any other fixture in the rig... By using the VLX Wash as our primary wash fixture we are saving at least 5–6 hours per week in crew time, which brings down our overall production costs. Plus you can definitely count on the VLX Wash to look the same on the very last performance as they did on the day you opened.”

Luminus’ CBM-380 chip is also used in several other Philips fixtures: the VARI*LITE VLX3 Wash, as well as the Selecon PL1 and PL3. Luminus says that the benefit of all these fixtures is their color quality, which can do the aesthetic work of traditional fixtures efficiently enough to require less maintenance while continually delivering more reliability and brightness.

“When we began this program with Vari-Lite, our goal was to deliver a new kind of LED stage light, one that not only offered the obvious advantages of LED — efficiency, reliability, intense saturated color and blindingly fast color changes — but a fixture that also produced intense high-quality white light, freedom from color shadows, and a traditional moving-head form factor previously available only from lamp-based fixtures,” says Don McDaniel Ph.D., director of Global Entertainment for Luminus. “It’s gratifying to see the VLX receive the awards and accolades specifically validating our success in every one of these objectives,” he adds. “We’re looking forward to seeing Philips Vari-Lite take these unique attributes to new users with products like the Selecon PL3 and the new VLX3 Wash.”

Tags: Luminus LEDs

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