I’ve got a nice Rega Planar 3 I’ve had for about 20 years.

I like it very much. It’s been serviced recently and sounds great.
Unfortunately, over the years the two hinges on the lid have broken, across the flexible plastic hinge itself.

I can get a new lid for £80, or a new pair of hinges for a tenner.

Unfortunately, I’ve no idea about how to remove the pop rivets that hold the hinge to the lid.
I assume I’d have to drill them out, but I don’t want to damage the lid.

Not confident about re riviting the new hinges in place either.

I could just use nuts and bolts with rubber washers, but it’ll look a bit shonky.

Local HiFi place reckon they can fit the new hinges for about £30.00, but I fancy giving it a go myself.

Anyone else had this problem?

This;

is the kind of hinge I have.

Thanks in advance.

Rega spares used to be dirt cheap – a quick look on some sites and it seems like they’ve tripled in the last few years!

That’s absolutely no help, I know 🙂

Drill em out. You don’t even need to drill all the way through, just enough to take the head off

To refit you might me able to get some nice dome head bolts that wouldn’t look too bad. Bit of black nail varnish to cover it up on the inside

Dumb question, but whats the best way to drill them out? 😳
Any tips gratefully received.

I’d use a drill a bit bigger than the hole. You don’t want it to be too close to the size of the hole or it might jam in and start the rivet spinning which will melt the Perspex

Drill from the outside of the lid to the inside so you can put a block of wood inside to push against

Use a reasonable high drill speed to stop the drill catching

If you need to drill for more than a couple of seconds then stop and cool it down with water. You don’t want the perspex to melt

I may be wrong 🙂

drill from whatever side that the sacrificial part is on (the one you are replacing).

Slow speed, sharp bit, as leffers says, a little bigger than the rivet head.

You’ll be able to get black fixings on ebay etc I’d have thought – may look better than rivets anyhoo. PLastic is of course non resonant 😎

BATTLE

I would drill fast

Those rivets are thin, I doubt it would matter, it’s not like spd bolts that will melt your shoe sole.

DRAW

Pass me a leffe.

Mmmmmmmm leffe
Gets distracted. Damn your lawyer diversionary tactics