Hi rlquigley,
The better options or possibilities I’m aware of in and around the Agoura Hills area (subject to making sure any mattress you are considering meets that quality/value guidelines that are linked in the next part of this reply) are listed in the Ventura/Santa Barbara list here or in the list for the Los Angeles region that it also links to.
There is more information about the 3 most important parts of “value” of a mattress purchase in post #13 here which can help you make more meaningful quality/value comparisons between mattresses in terms of suitability (how well you will sleep), durability (how long you will sleep well), and the overall value of a mattress compared to your other finalists based on suitability, durability, and all the other parts of your personal value equation that are most important to you (including the price of course and the options you have available after a purchase if your choice doesn’t turn out as well as you hoped for).
I would also keep in mind that while other people’s comments about the knowledge and service of a particular business can certainly be very helpful … I would be very cautious about about using other people’s experiences or reviews on a specific mattress (either positive or negative) as a reliable source of information or guidance about how you will feel on the same mattress or how suitable or how durable a mattress may be for you and in many if not most cases they can be more misleading than helpful because a mattress that would be a perfect choice for one person or even a larger group of people may be completely unsuitable for someone else to sleep on even if they are in a similar weight range or have similar sleeping positions (see post #13 here).
Having said that … I do think highly of Berkeley Ergonomics because they make a wide range of component mattresses that all use high quality materials and there are no lower quality materials or weak links that would compromise the durability or useful life of the mattress in any of their mattresses. A forum search on Berkeley Ergonomics (you can just click the link) will bring up many more comments and feedback about them as well.
They are both very different mattresses (the Linden is an all Talalay latex mattress while the Wysteria uses a pocket coil support core with a microcoil and latex comfort layer) so they will have a very different “feel” and response but if you have done some careful testing on both of them (hopefully using the testing guidelines in the tutorial) and you are confident that either the Wysteria or the Linden would be a good match for you in terms of PPP and that you will sleep well on either one of them then they would certainly be well worth considering.
There is also more about some of the differences between a latex support core and an innerspring support core in post #2 here but the choice between them would really be a preference and/or a budget choice rather than a “better/worse” choice.
[quote]Due to my weight, I’m concerned the Berkely Ergonomics 6" mattress core might not be enough, and I read the Pure Latex Bliss has a 10" core.
Are my concerns valid? [/quote]
The Berkeley Ergonomics Linden has 8" of latex (not 6") and Pure Latex Bliss makes a range of mattresses that vary from 8" to 12". The thickest individual latex core you will find will be 6" because that is the thickness of the mold (all the PLB mattresses also use a 6" latex core as the bottom layer). Thinner layers would be slit from the 6" core but most latex mattresses use multiple layers not just a single core.
While the thickness of a mattress can make a difference … I would be very cautious about choosing a mattress based on its thickness alone because the thickness of a mattress or any individual layers inside it is really just a side effect of the design and the design goals of a mattress and is also only one of many variables that can affect the feel and performance of a mattress relative to any particular person and by itself isn’t particularly meaningful (see post #2 here). In some cases higher weight ranges will sometimes do better with a mattress that is thicker than lower weight ranges (see post #14 here for more about the effect of thickness) but even this depends more on the specific design and combination of materials in the mattress and on how well your testing or personal experience indicates the mattress “as a whole” matches your specific needs and preferences in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and your Personal preferences) than anything else.
Phoenix