Following lengthy industry speculation, ETC is to enter the LED luminaire market, having acquired the Selador product line from Selador co-founders Rob Gerlach and Novella Smith.
“We didn’t want to make a ‘me too’ RGB or RGBA product that didn’t provide the kind of significant innovation in lighting we strive for,” says ETC CEO Fred Foster. “With its exclusive x7 Color System, the Selador product line produces a far superior quality of colour and light to anything that we had seen before in LEDs. We also benefit from the brainpower of Selador LED experts Novella and Rob – great people who will join our ETC team.”
Selador’s x7 Color System seven-hue technology produces a light and colour quality that conventional LED systems cannot duplicate. This unique system produces bright broad-spectrum whites and intense colours equally well, rendering pigments and skin tones in a far more natural way. You can read more about the x7 Color System on Rob Gerlach’s blog at www.etcconnect.com/lightminds .
The Selador x7 Color System also finds its perfect counterpart in ETC’s control products. ETC’s Marketing Manager David Lincecum explains: “ETC brings to the table a unique capability to make the control of LED luminaires easier, more direct and user friendly, and that is the key to making the tool really work for the designer. We have already integrated colour matching and HSI (hue, saturation and intensity) control of Selador products into the latest software releases of our Eos and Congo lighting control desk lines.”
There are three luminaire families in the Selador line-up, each of which are designed to provide excellent colour depth and mixing as required. Novella explains: “The Paletta line’s unique blend of seven colours of LEDs was selected to provide the depth of colour you are used to from your favourite saturated gels. The Lustr line uses a different blend of seven colours which are optimised for producing broad spectrum whites and tinted colours – solving the traditional LED problem of making people look unnatural.”
The third product line in the Selador series is the high output colour mixing Vivid, which ETC is debuting. The Vivid series combines the Selador x7 Color System with powerful K2 emitters from Luxeon, for the highest output currently available. Rob says: “Vivid LED luminaires provide high brightness and intense coloured lighting for much longer throws, while matching and blending with gel colours and tungsten lamps.”