Tascam 44 no level controls

Hi everyone,I have just purchased a Tascam 44 reel to reel recorder,very nice unit but has no controls for the input or output.I guess it is supposed to be used with a mixer of some sort.I hooked it directly to my cd player & was able to make a recording that sounded quite good but all the meters were pinned during recording & playback.On all my other decks there is level controls for the input to adjust recording levels & also controls for the output.I was wondering if I should look for a cd player that has variable output to control the level of input going into the reel to reel recorder or if there is some other way to do this with a different device.Thanks for any input you may have on this topic.