Walker CJ55 - Blast from the past

[Simon Bailey]

Hi, a newbie to this site, thanks for reading this.
Clearing out the loft (New Years resolution) and found my old deck, Walker CJ55.
Before it goes to a local shop to find a better home, as I have no room for it, just thought I would try and get it working again, it sounded great in its day.
It has a Linn Basik LV V arm and it did have a Aeg MC cartridge which had a broken stylus, so I replaced that with a Rega Carbon MM cartridge, which fitted fine.
Have tried in both the disc and aux input of my NAD C325BEE integrated with the earth wire connected to a screw on the case of the amp. Works great sound clear, belt is fine, motor good, but there just isn't any sound, or rather it is a fraction of the sound of my CD player.
Just wondering if it is worth doing anymore as I won't be keeping it ? It's only nostalgic reasons really, I may take out the new cartridge sell on eBay and just get the deck recycled.
Any comments much appreciated.
Simon, Bristol UK

 

[Old Mercer]

Hi, a newbie to this site, thanks for reading this.
Clearing out the loft (New Years resolution) and found my old deck, Walker CJ55.
Before it goes to a local shop to find a better home, as I have no room for it, just thought I would try and get it working again, it sounded great in its day.
It has a Linn Basik LV V arm and it did have a Aeg MC cartridge which had a broken stylus, so I replaced that with a Rega Carbon MM cartridge, which fitted fine.
Have tried in both the disc and aux input of my NAD C325BEE integrated with the earth wire connected to a screw on the case of the amp. Works great sound clear, belt is fine, motor good, but there just isn't any sound, or rather it is a fraction of the sound of my CD player.
Just wondering if it is worth doing anymore as I won't be keeping it ? It's only nostalgic reasons really, I may take out the new cartridge sell on eBay and just get the deck recycled.
Any comments much appreciated.
Simon, Bristol UK

Does the "disc" input that you referred to signify LPs or CD? If it's CD maybe your amp does not have an input for LPs, which require a special phono preamp section as the output from a cartridge is much less than that from a CD player or tuner. The fact that you can hear something, but only faintly, suggests that the signal from the deck is not being amplified as much as it needs to be. But if there is a phono input and all you're hearing is a very faint sound indeed, then what you hear may be just the acoustic sounds produced by the stylus tracking the groove, like an acoustic gramophone from the 1920s. In that case there may be a break in the wiring somewhere between the cartridge and the outputs on the deck. I hope this helps.

Even if there is a fault, someone may buy the deck on ebay with a view to repairing it or the arm.