Strange but I've noticed that once a person posts a problem on this board, they often discover the answer for themself. I discovered that if I extract the head from the neck then export it out and then import it into Zbrush, I can then export it from Zbrush and back into Maya then combine and merge the head back to the neck. Then I can go back to Zbrush with the originally exported>imported head and sculpt it into as many copies as I need then bring them into Maya and they will work flawlessly as blend shapes. The key was pretty basic; do the same thing to each head and the vertices will stay the same for all of them. Tonight's test will be to break a model down into more seperate parts (head, torso, arms) then try to make blend shapes for each. My only worry is what will happen when I combine the multiple parts of the original model back together. It worked well when I ran my test with the head and neck but now I want to see what happens when I add more body parts to the scenario. I'll post my results later.