Shimming a Gypsy Guitar's Bridge

This guitar came into my shop with very low action (1/32" on the bass and treble) and, of course, some fret buzz.

The only way to get this guitar's action up to where it needed to be was to pop the bridge off and put some shims underneath. I masked off the top so as not to scratch the finish, and tapped the bridge out of the center with a couple of light taps with a mallet.

Luckily, I had some ebony around and was able to make shims of the proper sizes. I labelled them and marked the fronts, to avoid confusion in the future during string changes, etc. This was a job where I didn't want to glue the shims in place, because there were some obvious humidity issues with the guitar. It could still move some more, so we might be re-visiting this job in the future (hopefully not).

This bridge's edges were not completely square, so that the center section could be pressure-fitted. To add to this weirdness, the width of the center and the edges were different. These shims aren't going to be invisible due to these factors, but at least they're ebony and aren't an eyesore. The action's where it should be now, with no buzzing!