help with an admiral

[David Roper]

Any number of component failures can cause a dark screen. There's no point in narrowing it down because the set needs a thorough restoration before you can safely use it. Most of the components under the chassis are probably original to the set i.e. almost 60 years old. Electrolytic capacitors in the power supply can short, possibly causing the smoky failure of a hard-to-replace power transformer. Paper capacitors are leaky electrically, resistors have drifted out of acceptable tolerance. All electrolytic and paper capacitors must be replaced with new ones and all resistors evaluated and replaced as necessary.

But before that, you need to make sure the picture tube is good or at least good enough to be usable. Do you have any experience with electronics? If you don't, you'll want to find somebody nearby who can give you some help as a TV set is not a project for a beginner.

ETA: It is a very nice looking set and it's great that you want to use it. I don't mean to take the wind out of your sails, just want you to understand that doing it right is a major undertaking.