Trim pot advice -- thanks!

[Chris (the Hex)]

Thanks to everyone who responded with ideas on trimpot removal technique.
A few responses which may help people with this mod specifically in the future:
first, a few folks indicated that the shape of the legs can make a difference.
The legs on the Poly 800 pots are squarish, not round.  I definitely think
this affected how difficult they were to remove.

I'll also be less bashful in the future about removing the board from the
unit before working on it.  Basically, when I started out I was afraid to
fully remove all the ribbon connectors from the board.  It seems clear to be
from what certain people said about how they angle the board when working
that fully removing the board before starting work on it would have saved me
a lot of trouble.

There was some mention of using a small screwdriver or something similar to
try to lever the component while applying heat.  I tried this -- though it
seemed to me that this was probably bad technique at the time.  I didn't
have any luck. It was really a matter of not being able to apply consistent
pressure to all the legs at once, which I wasn't able to do either with
pliers (from above) or a screwdriver (from below).  To summarize ideas given:

1. Use a weight of some kind (a C-clamp, or rubber band connected to a
weight) suspended from the component to pull it out of place as you heat and
remove solder from the reverse side;
2. Cut the sucker up and then remove each of the legs independently;
3. Carefully and laboriously lever each leg a little bit at a time and
continue until you manage to pull the thing out.

I think I tried each of these techniques, just in the wrong order. ;)  But a
thought occurs to me:  aren't there tiny little salad-tong type devices used
for pulling stubborn IC's out of sockets without bending their legs?  Anyone
ever used something like that to yank a pot out?

Thanks again to all y'all for the good ideas...

Cheers,
Chris (the Hex)