well, taking everyone's advice, i scrapped paper tuning in favor of bare shaft tuning...last night i took some arrows, scraped off the vanes and began comparing fletched arrows impacting to unfletched impacting...i have to say, there was no right and left impacting of the arrows compared to the fletched arrows...so, that tells me that my spine is correct...i did however get the nock high flight (unfletched arrows impacting below my fletched arrows. surprise, surprise [:-]) i again, played the old "move the nock up and down" game...same results...[:@] so, i think well, lets fiddle with the rest. i moved the rest back and forth slightly while shooting arrows and got what i expected to get, the arrows impacting the target right and left of where my pin is set but still showing that high nock impact...grrrr...so, i decided to try to force the arrow to show a spine problem, just to make sure spine isn't the culprit here. i start cranking the poundage up and down while shooting unfletched arrows. and sure enough, the arrows are showing the appropriate stiff spine and weak spine impacts. so, i'm really thinking that it is either a couple of things causing the high nock impact:

1. my form (it could be, but i've never had this problem when shooting a mech release)

2. my holding method (yeah, a 34 is short for fingers, i know, but by golly i want to make it work [8D]) which could be causing some kind of pinch on the arrow.

i personally think it is number 2, but would like to hear some opinions. can anyone suggest what else it might be? i am just beside myself trying to solve this...and let me ask this...when i get my bow "tuned" will i be able to shoot bare shafts and hit exactly where my fletched arrows do?

thanks everyone for all the responses, they really have helped a lot...