Hi Brett,
[quote]Ha! then i laid sideways on the split mattress with the 32 under by bottom half and the 28 under my shoulders. That felt pretty good! Unfortunately, zoned construction is not something they are interested in doing.
Any ideas on who would be interested in doing it? [/quote]
Zoned construction is “less likely” to be necessary with a latex mattress (see post #7 here).
Have you tried the softer core with a thinner 2" comfort layer?
If may also be worth lying on the softer version for about 30 minutes without moving to see if you can sense any stress or tension or pain in your lower back or an “urge” to change position because what you “feel” about alignment or how deeply it “feel like” you are sinking in may not always be reliable when you are testing a material with different properties that you haven’t slept on in the past may not always translate into actual “symptoms” in your sleeping experience (see post #22 here and post #6 here). I would also keep in mind that if you did decide on the softer mattress and it turned out not to be “supportive” enough that with a component mattress you would have the option to exchange it for the firmer support core and if you needed to then you would still have the option to add a relatively thin topper as well if your actual sleeping experience indicated that you needed it once you have slept on the mattress for 30 days or so and the mattress has had a chance to break in or you have made other “fine tuning” adjustments that can help (see post #2 here).
I don’t know of any specific zoned mattresses that are available locally (I don’t keep a record of the specifics of the mattresses that are available in the showrooms of all the hundreds of retailers/manufacturers that are in the many lists throughout the forum because that would be more than anyone could keep up with in a constantly changing market) so you would need to check with any local retailers/manufacturers to see if they have a zoned latex mattress that you would be interested in testing but if you do decide that a zoned construction is a main priority for you then there is more about zoning in this article along with post #11 here and post #2 here and both Flobeds here and Reverie here make latex mattresses that are available online that have zoned designs that can be customized. .
Phoenix