Anyone have any experience with these? Purchased one online today.

It arrived today. The volume is very weak. Can barely hear anything. And I noticed that when I did have it on a station that the dial light would dim and brighten while anyone was talking. Where would be the best place to start looking for the problems?

4 tubes plus solid state power supply. Don't think it even has a RF amplifier. AC/DC operation so best to use an isolation transformer.
$70 new. I would consider it a beginner receiver. Same as a Hallicrafters S-120 and WR-600.

I once had one of these. Mine had a 35W4 rectifier. After re-cap and alignment, it worked much better than the S-120 that I also had at the time. As I recall, the schematic was glued inside the cabinet which is common among Japanese-made radios. If it's not there your can see it in this post:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=210203

Because of your description, I would first suspect a shorted cap across the output transformer primary.

Dave

I got it going today. Some one must have shoved something in the headphone jack and bent the contacts up. Fixed those and it came to life. On a strong AM station I barely have to turn the volume up to get great sound. But it does have a constant low hum when tuning between stations and with the volume turned down. I figure looking at a recap job. This will be a good radio for me to learn on.