[Jeffhs]

The schematic for your radio can be found at radiomuseum.org; search on "75p6u" for the info. This radio was made probably in the early to mid 1950s by Bendix, a division of Bendix Aviation, in Baltimore. It is a 6-tube superhet covering 550-1600kHz/88-108 MHz, and was marketed in at least two versions: as a standalone table model and as a radio/phono combination set.

This radio should perform excellently once it is properly restored, as it seems to be a well-built set, as were most of the better sets of the '50s; with the RF amplifier tube ahead of the antenna (I don't know if it uses the same RF amp tube on AM as well as on FM), it should be a great DX set, and it probably sounds wonderful as well. Radios of the early-mid 1950s had to be built for DX reception, as in those days not every city or town had a local radio station; hook up a decent antenna to one of these sets and you may well find your radio pulling in more stations than you can imagine. I have a Zenith C845 that regularly gets FM stations 50 miles from my home near Cleveland; at night, the AM radio dial on this set lights up as well when the DX starts rolling in--and all this is with just the antennas built into the radio. Your Bendix will probably be just as hot, as any radio with an RF stage ahead of the antenna should be, if the tube is in good shape.

I'd test all six tubes and replace any doubtful ones, although if the cathode emission is still half decent, and the radio works well and sounds good (no hum or other distortion), you can just leave them alone until they either burn out or you notice symptoms such as reduced audio output or falling RF sensitivity (i.e. the radio will only receive nearby or local stations). By "doubtful" I mean tubes that test in the "weak" range of a tube tester. If any tube in your radio registers in the "replace" region of your tester's meter, that tube is so weak it is practically unusable, and needs to be replaced if the radio is to perform well.

I am not a fan of "shotgun" replacement of every capacitor in any vintage radio unless there is a problem, but I do feel that the filter capacitors should be replaced as a matter of routine, as the filters in any radio made 50+ years ago are almost certain to be defective. I have a Zenith H511 from 1951 (59 years ago) that still plays well, very little hum, and still has its original 3-section filter; however, this is an exception to the rule--again, nine times out of ten the filters in any vintage or antique radio you, I or anyone else here at VK or elsewhere may run across will either already be defective or are failing, and of course must be replaced if the radio is to operate hum-free. However, in transformer-powered radios it is very important to replace borderline or outright defective filter caps, even if there is little or no hum. Failure to do so will likely result in damage to the power transformer or other sections of the radio when, not if, the cap eventually fails. This could and likely will complicate servicing since replacement power trannies for vintage, and almost certainly antique, radios can be difficult or even impossible to find, especially if the original has special taps for the rectifier tube filament, pilot lamp(s), etc.

I hope this helps. These older radios will, as a rule (if they are in good shape), run rings around today's flimsily-built plastic one-chip portables; once you get your Bendix in top shape, as I mentioned, it should pull in stations like crazy and sound excellent. As I always say regarding Zenith and other premium brands of radios, they don't make them like that anymore. From your location in Nova Scotia, Canada, you should be able to DX up and down the east coast and into part of the midwestern and southwestern United States after dark with this set if, as I suspect, the RF amplifier tube is used on both AM and FM, as it is with many of Zenith's better AM/FM radios of the 1950s; I've heard AM stations on my vintage radios as far west of Ohio as Houston and Dallas, Texas, using only the radios' built-in AM antennas.

Nighttime DX on frequencies normally occupied during the day by small 500- and 250-watt (or less) local-service stations that presently do not operate under the relatively new FCC rules giving daytime AM stations the option of operating at night with low power, but which sign off at sunset local time--and there are still a few of those left, mostly in small, one-horse towns that can't afford to run the local station 24/7--can be had as well, although you will have to listen to a hodgepodge of weak signals competing with one another; however, every once in a while you may hear a station hundreds of miles away coming in with a listenable signal above all the others. You may be pleasantly surprised, once you get your Bendix radio in peak shape, to hear -- well after sundown -- a 250-watt peanut whistle AM station 1000 miles away or more, booming in as well as if it were local--or at least strong enough to be listened to.