Kimball made semi-automatic (early) and fully automatic (later)
roll players for their pipe organs.  One of the fully automatic roll
players was attached to the 4/55 Kimball pipe organ in the ballroom
at the Atlantic City Convention Hall (now known as Boardwalk Hall).
The Ballroom is adjacent to the main auditorium where the big
Midmer-Losh pipe organ is located.

Last year I did extensive research on the Kimball fully automatic
roll player system with help from several people who were quite
familiar with the Soloist system.  When I was doing volunteer work on
the Midmer-Losh organ in Atlantic City last June, I inspected the roll
player in the Ballroom and also the Kimball relay.  The roll player
only played 13 of the 55 ranks (which was typical for this brand of
player) and the celesta and piano.

I also made a catalog of the 40 Kimball soloist rolls that are in 
the collection there and shared that with Jim Weisenborne, who is
maintaining a master list of Kimball rolls.  The fully automatic roll
library was not extensive (150 to 300 rolls?).  The semi-automatic
library seems to have been larger but not by a lot.  No one that I
contacted has ever seen a Kimball roll catalog.

The original relay in Atlantic City was disconnected a number of years
ago when the hall was remodeled.  Since then a Peterson electronic
relay has been installed and the Kimball organ is continuing to be
restored.  It was played for tours and special events in 2014 and it
sounds spectacular in that room.

One of the owners of an original Kimball organ with a Soloist player
had a number of rolls scanned and then had an engineer design and build
a custom interface for his electronic relay so he could play the rolls
and also the electronic files created by the scans.

A written description of the fully automatic 98-channel tracker scale
was provided to me and from that I created a spreadsheet describing the
functions.  The player is capable of playing two manuals and pedal and
it uses multiplexing to cover the full compass of the keyboards.  It
can control two independent sets of swell shades and also a crescendo
device.  The Kimball system uses presets for stop control.

The original paperwork showing how your organ was wired is the best
source of information and I did find that for the Atlantic City
Ballroom organ.  Tracing wiring in the relay is a tedious but second
possibility.  The third option is to just wire your instrument to be
similar to the way others have been set up.

Since I do not have permission from the creator of this work to
distribute it, I am not publishing names or the contents but if you
contact me privately I will forward your request to the person who did
all of the research.

Unfortunately, there was a sudden and unexpected change in the
leadership and direction of the work in Atlantic City last fall so
I will not be doing any more work on that project.  But there is a
small core (5 or 6 people) of Kimball Soloist enthusiasts out there
with both knowledge and first hand experience with the Soloist system,
so it is not a total orphan.

Larry Kerecman