If you play acoustic guitar (or an electric guitar with an acoustic bridge complete with bridge pins), it’s almost inevitable that at some point, a bridge pin will get stuck. It’s frustrating — and when you’re frustrated, it’s all too easy to grab the wrong tool and either damage or break off the top of your bridge pin, making everything worse. Here’s a few tips to help remove that pesky stuck pin without damaging it.
The first thing to try is to push down on the string under the stuck bridge pin. In some cases, the ball end of the string gets wedged between the pin and the bridge plate. In these cases, if you can un-wedge the string, the bridge pin will lift right out.
If loosening and pushing the string doesn’t let you pull up the stuck pin, try to push it up from inside the guitar. To do this, you’ll need to loosen (or ideally remove) all your other strings so you can fit your entire hand inside your guitar. Then grab onto the pin, and you can try to wiggle and push it up from underneath. If wiggling and pushing with your fingers does nothing, you can try to pop it up with something light, like a coin or small block of wood — something small enough to fit and be easy for you to hold inside the guitar, and not so heavy as to smash the pin or bridge.
If you’re bridge pin is still stubbornly stuck, the next thing to try is to pry the bridge pin up using tools — but carefully. Some string winders, such as the Planet Waves Pro-Winder, have a simple bridge pin grabber on them; if you have one of those, give it a try. They generally don’t allow you to get a lot of leverage, but they’re completely safe, so you don’t have to worry about damaging your pin on the guitar. If you don’t have one, the wire cutters that you use to cut the ends off the strings are a good tool, or needle-nose pliers, but in either case, don’t squeeze too tightly or you risk slicing into your bridge pin. You might want to wrap a light cloth, like a polishing cloth around the pin before grabbing it with a tool like this, to help protect the pin.
For a really stuck pin, you might find that it takes a combination of all of the above to remove it. But the trick is that no matter how frustrating it gets, to just keep trying different things. Just don’t give into the temptation to put all your muscle into ripping the offending pin up no matter what — that’s how bridges, guitars, and pins get damaged!