Thanks for the helpful advice. I've decided to put in a Bridge Doctor. Now to decide which version.

There are two - one of them uses a hole drilled through the bridge with a screw, the other uses one of the existing pinholes, and replacing all the pins with brass ones with holes for the strings, and that's a good bit pricier, and puts the whole thing slightly off to one side, whereas I have a feeling it'd work better if it was dead centre.

The thing is, I've already got a screw through the bridge in the relevant place, and I could use that. But it's covered by a pearl plug, and I can't see a way of removing it so I can get at the existing screw to remove it. I'm reluctant to just break it out, in case when I remove it I find there's some problem with removing the existing screw.

Anybody got any crafty way for removing that pearl plug without destroying it?