Do I have this right?
No you don't. You're putting words in my mouth and dragging up things which have nothing to do with this thread.
I was talking to Tim Jones and the sole point of my post was to suggest that, unlike many turntables, there is a real synergy between the mat and ceramic platter and I found that any substitute I tried sounded worse. Jono13 understood it?
I've tried different mats on the LP12 and found merit in most of them. The Collaro mat is very widely accepted by Linn users for example. But Rega have developed a mat specifically for use on the ceramic platter and I think they got it right. Tim is free to try whatever he likes of course, I did it myself, but just because a cork or whatever mat works on a metal or glass platter does not mean it will work on the ceramic one. That platter is hugely expensive and adding unnecessary isolation between it and the record defeats the whole purpose of having it in the first place.