Thoughts on moving from a 1200G to Sota Saphire or above

Try SAEC SS-300 mat, you can easily use it with any clamp on Technics.
It equally good on SP-10 mkII

Water is the bare minimum, IMO

I have heard/read that a special phono IC with ground wires be used from turntable to phono stage due to the extremely small signal coming from the cartridge. I had used a conventional IC from the TT at first, and noticed a big improvement switching to a dedicated phono cable.

Can anyone else confirm this as I have heard others using just conventional IC's.

It’s about Shielded vs. Unshielded cables, not about the separate ground wire @mr_m

Mr m, dedicated phono cables meant only to be used between a tonearm and a phono stage input, usually have a female DIN plug at the tonearm end. A DIN plug mates with a male DIN to be found at the base of the tonearm, and it contains five connections, two for right channel hot and ground, two more  for left channel hot and ground, and the fifth connection makes contact with the body of the tonearm. That fifth connection is what you see as an external ground wire, and it is meant to be connected to the external ground lug on a typical phono stage. Some tonearm/turntable combinations offer a pair of RCA outputs. In that case one can use conventional ICs. As you noted, those don’t give an external ground connection per se. In that case the only grounds are the Audio grounds. If your tonearm offers RCA outputs, then you might consider adding a secondary wire that you can attach anywhere on the tonearm or to a metal part of the turntable and then to the ground lug on the phono stage. Sometimes that is not needed. In fact, sometimes you’re better off without it.