Spectra of highly excited hidden and open-charm mesons calculated on dynamical lattice QCD ensembles with a pion mass of M $\sim$ 240 MeV are presented and compared to previous results obtained on a lattice where M $\sim$ 400 MeV. The distillation technique was employed in order to compute the necessary correlation functions, allowing the use of a large basis of interpolating operators with various spatial structures. This basis included operators proportional to the gluonic field strength, allowing the identification of possible hybrid states. We conclude that reducing the light quark mass has little effect on the overall pattern and structure of the spectra.