Getting more out of my nikon coolscan ls-40

I'm saving up for an optifilm 120 or similar but for the time being all I have is the coolscan ls-40. I'm not real happy with the quality of the scans. I almost exclusively scan black and white and I feel that the led light source is really giving me grainy/scratchy images. I compared a scan with one of the same image made years ago on a nikon 9000 and even at a smaller file size it was much more crisp.

Does anyone have any tips to get a little more out of this scanner? I'm on a mac using vuescan, and have the full photoshop cc plus lightroom at my disposal. I can't afford the full silver fast, though I do have the se but you can only get 8 bit.

Thanks,
John