The Subcontrabassoon project is a community oriented project run by Richard Bobo through his Youtube channel. Because of the high level of technical skill required to build a subcontrabassoon with the same level of mechanical features as a bassoon or contrabassoon, a community project was launched enabling many different people to come together to give advice on how to design and construct the instrument. This is similar to the way Martin Molin has structured his project to build the Marble Machine X, which also took a large amount of community involvement to design and construct the instrument.
Youtube- 1)
The subcontrabassoon is an interesting look into the ways that instrument players are interested in extending an instrument family and the ways they want to innovate possibilities in the orchestral sphere. In many ways the instrument is very impractical but in others it really evokes the experimental ethos that this wiki is very much about.
Richard Bobo is part of a conceptual group of makers I am yet to have a name for, where they are mostly wind instrument players, who are interested in innovating instruments that are in the same familes as orchestral instruments but are extending the ranges and advancing the possibilities of the instruments. Also included in this group are Bret Newton (who is developing the Great Bassoon), Jared De Leon (who is developing the subcontrabass clarinet]], Susanne Fröhlich and Maarten Helder (who developed the Helder Recorder.), Houshun Masuda- A bird flageolet maker, and Sarah Nicolls and David Klavins (who are both building extended pianos).