"We constantly strive to strengthen our product portfolio. Over the past few years, we received numerous requests to create smaller and more affordable versions of our most popular fixtures," said Bob Schacherl, Philips Vari-Lite vice president of sales and marketing. "Since we are generally recognised as the pioneers of the modern automated luminaire, we knew we could not sacrifice any of the performance qualities expected with the VARI*LITE brand. After listening to dealers and designers from around the world, we identified the characteristics they wanted and created what we feel are four fantastic product lines."
Based on the VLX Wash luminaire technology, the VLX3 Wash uses three powerful LED engines to offer "stunning colours and intensity, a multi-year source life and high reliability". The three, replaceable 120-watt RGBW LED chipsets provide output that offers three times the efficacy of comparable tungsten sources and the total system provides approximately 6,000 lumens of white light output, and the 10,000 hour source life of the chip ensures that lamp replacement costs are a thing of the past.
The VL400 Spot luminaire uses a 400-watt MSR Gold 400 MiniFastFit lamp to provide 9000 lumens of output, plus 14 fixed colours on two independent color wheels for rich color projection and snap colour changes. In addition, a dual-purpose mechanical blade system provides smooth timed fades or variable strobe effects.
The VL440, VL770 and VL880 Spot luminaires all provide brilliant colour mixing through the three-wheel CYM colour assembly based on the Series 3000 color system. Plus, they each have eight standard colours on a fixed wheel, a coated glass dimmer wheel, a separate dual-blade strobe system.
(Jim Evans)
