Replacing Wood Shims on a Gretsch Guitar with Compression

Factory Gretsch guitars come equipped with wooden “shims” under the pickups. This couples the pickup with the guitar body and can sometimes move the pickup too close to the strings, which is not desirable. You can replace these shims with compression rubber. You can order a set of compression rubber here or use computer mouse pad material. Filter’Tron style pickups are extremely sensitive, so having this compression rubber underneath allows for much more control over the height of the pickup.

Carefully pop the shims out with a small chisel or screwdriver.

Use a computer mouse pad or TV Jones compression rubber and cut two strips roughly the same size as the shims.

Replace the old wooden shims with your new rubber shims.

Screw the pickups back onto the guitar.

You will now have much more flexiblity on the height of your pickup and will be able to get the height “just right”.