Klark Teknik DN360
The graphic equalizer that ended up in more touring drive racks than almost anything else, and the paperwork to prove it.
Overview
The DN360 shows up in the fine print of other people's equipment lists. Flip through a 2001 JBL tour-supply document and there it is, again and again: one DN360 in the Deftones' FOH rack alongside a Midas XL4; four of them on the Pokemon Live tour; a couple more in the Ernie Ball Moto Music Madness system, where the FOH engineer ran Klark Teknik DN360 equalizers in his drive and effects racks next to EV Dx38 processors and a DN6000 analyzer. AC/DC's "Stiff Upper Lip" tour carried the DN360's digital siblings, the DN3600B/C/E, plus a DN3603 remote dock and a DN3698 remote controller. When a piece of analog outboard keeps appearing in touring inventories a quarter-century after it was introduced, it's a working tool, not nostalgia.
The DN360 is a stereo graphic equalizer, the dual-channel version of the DN series that Klark Teknik built its reputation on. The company's own advertising in the early 1980s traced the lineage: the DN27, launched in 1975, was pitched as the graphic equalizer that brought high-reliability, precision performance down to a newly affordable price, and the DN360 is the next generation in that same line. Pro Audio Review (May 2006, p.28) said Klark Teknik had been a name synonymous with quality in the pro audio world for over thirty years, and called the DN360 "the graphic EQ." By 2001 the same publication (March 2001, p.60) grouped the DN300 and DN360 together as the units many engineers considered the reference point for high-end signal processing.
A 2001 JBL account of the New Orleans Heritage festival describes DN360s, DN6000s, and Klark Teknik drive racks at most of the front-of-house stations across the festival's twelve stages. A graphic EQ has one job there, and if it fails the show stops. Smaller operations follow the same pattern. Sound Dimensions LLC, a Farmington Hills, Michigan installer, kept Klark Teknik DN360 graphic equalizers on its electronics list alongside EV power amps and Dx38 processors for club installs and rentals.
Klark Teknik has always been a house of specialists rather than a one-hit operation. The DN-series graphic EQs sit alongside the DN6000 frequency analyzer, the DN60 analyzer, the DN500/DN504/DN514 dynamics processors, and later digital pieces like the DN3600 series and the DN9848 digital crossover system. Collectors who've spent time inside Klark Teknik gear tend to describe the whole line the same way: overbuilt, serviceable, and designed by people who expected the units to be racked, trucked, and used nightly for years. The DN360 is the most visible member of the family because it's the one that ended up in the most racks.
The documentation shows the DN360 was part of the touring ecosystem of its era. It wasn't a boutique item bought by audiophiles and babied at home. Sound companies bought it, installed it in drive racks, and used it to tune systems in rooms from Detroit dance clubs to festival stages. Its value today is partly historical and partly practical: it still does the job it was built to do, and the people who used them professionally remember them fondly enough to keep buying them back.
A note on sourcing: the surviving period documentation for the DN360 is heavy on application and light on bench measurements. The magazine coverage that survives from *Studio Sound* and *Pro Audio Review* establishes the DN360's reputation and its place in the Klark Teknik line, but detailed spec sheets and independent lab tests have not turned up in the material reviewed here. Anyone buying one today should expect to judge it on condition and function rather than on a published spec sheet.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.