ETC Selador VIVID/R Refurbs?

[Chris Chapman]

I have about 20 VIVID/R's in my rig. Ten of them are getting to be pretty old, and I can definitely tell a difference in their color output. Does ETC or anyone else refurb the LED's vs having to straight out purchase replacement instruments?

 

[macsound]

I've had this same question about all LED source products from the very beginning. Manufacturers swore that they'd last "long enough" for them to make sense fiscally, but still, then what? I want to unscrew the back, remove the light source and replace.
Probably not super practical for your Vivids, but for single source optics...

 

[MNicolai]

You can probably ask a dealer for pricing on just those PCB's with the emitter arrays on them. IIRC, it's basically a ribbon cable that goes between the emitter array PCB and the the rest of the electronics so should be fairly painless to swap that PCB out in those fixtures.

Not sure if there's calibration that needs to happen once it's installed that you may need to send to the factory for, but either way it shouldn't be a complicated process.

 

[TuckerD]

I think that a refurb with a new LED PCB should be doable. I've taken apart some of those and I don't think it looks impossible. There is a needed calibration step though. I wonder if ETC TS will start offering this as a standard product. I imagine there are thousands of units that people want to refurb. The optics and power supplies and what not are all still good and too expensive too throw out. I wouldn't think it would be free but way less than new fixtures.

I'd call ETC and ask around I think. Or get in touch with your dealer and see what they think.

 

[macsound]

Maybe we can get official statements and this can be an off the shelf, user replaceable process in the future, even if renting a calibrator is recommended.
It would be nice for every end user to not have to contact manufacturers individually because places that write off the initial fixture expense are more likely to just trash them at EOL since there's no obvious "maintenance".

 

[TuckerD]

I could see calibration becoming a dealer service or what ever the system is for other techs to be certified by ETC. It's a bit hard for me to imagine a random org doing it themselves with a rented machine though.

 

[macsound]

I could see calibration becoming a dealer service or what ever the system is for other techs to be certified by ETC. It's a bit hard for me to imagine a random org doing it themselves with a rented machine though.

I mean, if I wanted people to be able to do it themselves, make it dead simple like computer monitor or printer color calibrators. Clips onto the front with a big frosty piece of plastic, plug into fixture service port, plug into computer via usb and boom!

 

[MNicolai]

I seem to recall we discussed calibration on here before and someone from ETC chimed in that given the control conditions and quality/cost of sensor and test/measurement equipment required it wasn't practical at this time to have customers field calibrate their own fixtures. Certainly subject to possible change in years to come, but I was looking at picking up a color spectrometer for my own entertainment and I've since backburnered that investment because it's about $1800.

In specific regards to Selador, there's the also the matter that those are first gen LED products by ETC that date back about 10 years. I'm not sure how much difference there is in the brains of those fixtures from the very most original Selador x7 fixtures before ETC acquired the line, but I'd say that the overall product R&D is about 16-17 years old, 10 years at best if there were updates made when ETC acquired Selador. When Rob Gerlach and Novella Smith were building these in Rob's garage, I have to imagine that end user field calibration was nowhere on the product development roadmap. At that point I think they were more focused on seeing that they could even build what they wanted to and then being able to find customers for it.