Other than leaving autofocus off, upsampling to greater than the native resolution or using aggressive FlexTouch settings, there's not a lot you can do to REDUCE resolution. I don't use FlexTouch. I have a Wacom to clean up scans manually. (This incidentally is one benefit of the more diffuse lamp in the 949/X5 over the 848, though whether it sacrifices resolution I don't know.)
The reason why I showed the hair rather than the scanned result is because the latter depends a lot on the original. If you're stopping down to f/32 or f/45 (as I'll often do) a significant contributer to softness in the scanned result is diffraction. Getting good scans done (namely using anything better than a consumer flatbed) or doing it yourself can tell you a lot about your camera technique, film etc. I wouldn't worry about diffraction though as it's easily counteracted with sharpening. It's what the print looks like at the final size that's important.
You may want to get your scanner operator to do some tests to check whether the scanner is out of alignment, or focus is uneven across the holder. If he's amenable and offers scans at this price it would be worth your time to figure out what the problem is before moving on. Don't get suckered into paying for drum scans if you don't need them.
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