Rackett

The rackett or Sausage Bassoon is a Renaissance-era introduced late in the sixteenth century and already superseded by bassoons at the end of the seventeeth century double reed wind instrument.

There are four sizes of rackett, in a family ranging from discant (soprano), tenor-alto, bass to great bass. Relative to their pitch, racketts are quite small (the discant rackett is only 4½ inches long, yet its lowest note is G, an octave and a perfect fourth below middle C). This is achieved through its ingenious construction; the body consists of a solid wooden cylinder into which nine parallel bores are drilled. These are connected alternately at the top and bottom, resulting in a long, cylindrical wind passage within a compact body which being able to carry in one's pocket an instrument that will descend as low in pitch as a modern bassoon.