Herb Reichert of Stereophile says no cartridge has played more records in his room than Dynavector's DV-20X2. On a field recording of 200 monks chanting in a courtyard, their shouts still startled him when he knew they were coming. A moving coil cartridge works like a tiny generator. The groove shakes the stylus, which swings small coils of wire past a magnet, and that motion makes the signal. Dynavector's big idea is to keep the magnet's field steady, since it says even a very small wobble in that field adds distortion. Its patented flux damper and its softened magnetism design are both ways of calming the magnet. Reichert hears the 20X2 play "clear, fast, and insightfully," and Todd Bromgard of TNT-Audio found its tone balanced "without imparting much of its own character." Dynavector suits listeners who want speed and detail from their records with a neutral balance.

The 10X5 MkII is the way in, and it comes in two versions. The high-output one is strong enough for an ordinary moving magnet phono input. Chris Kelly of The Ear used the phono stages built into two integrated amps and called it "a taste of the Champagne lifestyle on a Prosecco budget." The low-output version has fewer turns of wire on its coils, and Kevin Fiske of The Ear explains that lighter coils let it trace the groove more faithfully. He heard more detail and air from it, though it needs a moving coil phono stage or a step-up transformer. The next step is the XX-2 MkII, which Dynavector's US distributor calls probably the "sweet spot" in the lineup, and Reichert notes it is the least expensive Dynavector with a solid boron cantilever. Dynavector recommends loading the XX-2A above 30 ohms, and Chris Frankland, also of The Ear, tried 100 and 30 ohms and preferred 30.

Noboru Tominari, who founded Dynavector, was a professor of mechanical engineering at Tokyo Metropolitan University. Hi-Fi News credits him with the first successful high-output moving coil, which played through the moving magnet input then standard on every amplifier, and Dynavector says the 10X5 first appeared in 1978. Dynavector's dispersion theory holds that a shorter, stiffer cantilever, the little rod that carries the stylus, distorts the waveform less. In Audio magazine's 1980 test of the Karat Diamond, the cantilever was a rod of natural diamond less than half the usual length, and today's Karat 17DX still uses a solid diamond cantilever. The DV-507 MkII tonearm splits the work between a high-inertia main arm that swings sideways and a short, light sub-arm that moves up and down to ride over warps. Scott Faller of Enjoy the Music played Telarc's 1812 Overture, which he says can throw a cartridge from the groove, and the 507 held on. The Te Kaitora Rua came from work with Dynavector New Zealand, and its name is Maori for "The Discoverer."