Heckel System

The following information cones from Wikipedia:

The design of the modern bassoon owes a great deal to the performer, teacher, and composer Carl Almenräder, who, assisted by the German acoustic researcher Gottfried Weber developed the 17-key bassoon whose range spanned four octaves. Almenräder's improvements to the bassoon began with an 1823 treatise in which he described ways of improving intonation, response, and technical ease of playing by means of augmenting and rearranging the keywork; subsequent articles further developed his ideas. Working at the Schott factory gave him the means to construct and test instruments according to these new designs, the results of which were published in Caecilia, Schott's house journal; Almenräder continued publishing and building instruments until his death in 1843, and Ludwig van Beethoven himself requested one of the newly-made instruments after hearing of the papers. Almenräder left Schott to start his own factory along with partner J.A. Heckel in 1831.

Heckel and two generations of descendants continued to refine the bassoon, and it is their instrument that has become the standard for other instrument makers to follow. Because of their superior singing tone quality (an improvement upon one of the main drawbacks of the Almenräder instruments), the Heckel instruments competed for prominence with the reformed Wiener system, a Boehm-style bassoon, and a completely-keyed instrument devised by C. J. Sax, father of Adolphe Sax. One latecomer attempt, from 1893, with a logical reformed fingering system was implemented by F.W. Kruspe, but failed to catch on. Other attempts at improving the instrument included a 24-keyed model and a single-reeded mouthpiece, but both were found to have adverse effects on the bassoon's distinctive tone and were abandoned.

Coming into the 20th century the Heckel-style German model of bassoon dominated the field; Heckel himself had made over 4000 instruments by the turn of the century, and the English makers' instruments were no longer desirable for the changing pitch requirements of the symphony orchestra, remaining primarily in military band use.

Today the Heckel factory continues producing instruments (after a brief 1940s wartime conversion to ball-bearing manufacture) and Heckel bassoons are considered by many the best, although a range of different manufacturers exist, all with different modifications to their bassoons. Companies that manufacture bassoons are (among others): Heckel, Yamaha, Fox Products, Schreiber, Püchner, Signet, Moosmann, Kohlert, B.H. Bell. and Guntram Wolf. There are also several smaller bassoon manufacturers that make special instruments to fit special needs. In the 1960s the Englishman Giles Brindley began preliminary development of what he called the "logical" bassoon, which aimed to improve intonation and evenness of tone through use of electrically activated key combinations that were too complex for the human hand to manage.