Before today, I did not know what a windcap was. I just happened upon it in a book I’m reading…The Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes. And it is not an easy word to define.
I went to several sources (all online) without a lot of success. I went to m-w.com, my favorite site for looking up words, and it wasn’t there. I then wikipedia’ed it, and I got 4 articles that resulted in my conclusion that it was some part of archaic wind instruments. Luckily, people still sell instruments with windcaps and that means that google came through for me, even though I had to read several pages worth of hits to figure out what “windcap” meant.
So here it is: the windcap is part of a reeded instrument. It is a mouthpiece that fully encloses a single or double reed. And then, fully understanding what a windcap was, I was impressed because this is a super cool idea, and it is ancient.
Why? Because reeds suck. They break easily, and they can be quite inconsistent. And it is quite painful to play on a single reed instrument for any amount of time. I can only imagine how it is for the double reeds.
Since the windcap fully encloses the reed, the reed is fully protected. And the vertical pressure on the reed comes from the windcap, not your mouth. So I imagine it would be a bit more like playing a trumpet. I know that the present way of doing things works well for vibrato. But I think that the windcap could be engineered to produce the same if not better results. It’s kind of hard to believe that reeded instruments evolved away from the windcap, but what do I know. Anyway, if I’m ever going to play a reeded instrument again, I’m going to need a windcap. 
Tags: band, engineering, google, instruments, mouthpieces, reeds, windcaps