Is it me or the CS 6006 CD of Black Sabbath is the best version ever ?

My fave would be Virtual Death from Cross Purposes. I favor this over the other Martin albums because Geezer returned.

 

Tony Iommi on Twitter

Anyway, to all of you, don't forget than the 6006 and 6006-2 CDs are totally different between them. With or without pre-emphasis filter experimentation...

 

The Paranoid is the one with the black text on silver disc. 449806-2. As far as the Sold Our Souls CD set I don't remember much of any noises. Admittantly I don't play it much as I have a Japan 2lp set that is wonderful. I will keep an ear out for any. I picked it up mainly because it was 1.00 and has all of the tracks unlike the US, which I never bought.

 

Did Tony abandon his slack tuning technique on Sabotage? The guitar sound is so different from let’s say, MOR. Sounds like standard tuning to me...

 

AFAIK, from MOR through Sabotage, the guitars on most (not all) songs were tuned down by 1.5 steps. Standard tuning on the debut, Paranoid, TE and NSD. From HaH through 13 and The End, it was mostly 0.5 steps down; on Born Again, 1.0 step down.

That's the basic picture. A few songs were played in different tuning than others, and mostly the tuning is a tad higher or lower than standard 440Hz.

I agree the guitar sound on Sabotage is very different from MOR, but I don't know why. Maybe different amps or guitars or effects were used? Btw, I find the sound on SBS quite different from MOR as well.

 

Totally correct. Checked on my bass. C#

 

Here's a discussion on Sabbath's tunings:
Tuning Down

 

Hey I play bass too. Very nice.

 

C or C# tuning on bass or guitar is rather insane. Custom guitars since MoR sure. Shorter neck I think.

 

It's the opposite. Longer neck for bass, special length strings.
Best thing is to use a 5 string with the low B. You can play all the weird tunings no problem that way.

 

My fav is the Japanese for Europe. NELCD6002.

 

As far as I know, Sabbath was the first hard rock band to drop tune more than half a step. Now all these modern rock bands do it, not to be heavy, but because the singers just don't have the range to sing in standard tuning.
It's pretty amusing really. Ozzy could do both, it's pretty obvious Iommi wanted to make the songs heavier and scarier sounding.

 

That's the pressing I have. Plenty of warmth.

 

Geezer Butler Bass Rig - "Know Your Bass Player" (1/3) | Which Bass

You're surely right now, but at the time (MoR) Geezer's neck scale was shorter (30.5″ scale) than the usual Fender basses (34″ scale).
But again my bass is an old mid 80s Fender, and I don't know much about the new stuff, other manufacturers, 5-string ones, etc.
I mostly play keyboards and soprano sax now. My bass and guitar take the dust...

 

I'm going by what Spector basses has in their catalog. They sell 36" scale. Back in the good old days they did a lot of strange things to accomplish off the wall tunings and such. Also nobody realized back then that a 10" speaker had better low frequency response than a 15". So they had their bass cabs set up backwards. The four 10 cab should be setup for the lows, not the other way around like back then, and in the 80's.

 

I can’t notice too much of a difference between the 86 Castle and the 2009 remaster for the s/t, aside from a touch more compression on the 2009. I’ve already ruled out the original WB and the red 6006-2. I’m just waiting for the black 6006 to arrive so I can compare and make my final determination.

 

And what about the SACD? Did you listen to the sample?

 

Love the Intercord sound, still hoping to find Paranoid & SBS as cheap as I got this one:

 

Any suggestions/guidance for using the Audacity freeware to address a bright mastered file like this? I am not extremely technical but have successfully used Audacity to edit track lengths and lower track volume (@Freezerburn was kind enough to help me through the volume adjustment function awhile back).

Also, did I read somewhere that the mastering on Wicked World is less bright on The Ultimate Collection than on the 2014/2017 high res downloads?

 

I don't use Audacity but if it has a high-shelf EQ, try using that, select the frequency (start around 2000Hz) and the gain (start with -2dB) and modify both values to taste.

 

I haven' tried any permanent EQing so regrettably I cannot help with that. As for Wicked World, I don't remember any specific EQ differences between the two versions you mentioned, but I can confirm that they are indeed different (most notably in terms of stereo separation, try and listen with headphones), and actually the 2016 Rhino CD is different yet (only for this specific song). See the following post where I mention Wicked World and also give further links:
Linda's favorite digital versions of all Black Sabbath albums

 

If you have the volume level adjustment tweak correct, no EQ should be necessary.
On my CDR of the first album, I am using the Castle '86. I omitted Evil Woman, and the level adjusted Wicked World dropped right in. I don't find the Ultimate Collection version bright at all.

 

Perhaps you're right. I need to listen more. I made a CD-R of both the Self Title UK PBTHAL Vinyl rip and the Castle '86 but left the original UK track listing including Evil Woman intact but added Wicked World at the end. I have mostly listened to the UK Vinyl rip CD with the added WW which seems a bit more bright than the rest of the tracks but not terrible. I need to listen more to the '86 Castle with the added Wicked World. I am using the 2014 Complete Albums download of WW by the way. It took a little trial and error on my part but I was eventually successful placing the pre-emphasis flac on all the tracks except for Wicked World on my modified '86 Castle rip.

 

That's the one I prefer now as well. Listening with headphones, the super-sharp stereo separation on this track vs. the 2016/2017 tracks is fascinating.

 

Rather than editing the cue sheet to add the PRE Flags you could have used the deemphasis filter in Foobar on the whole album as one WAV track, change .flac to .wav in the cue sheet, and then split the large file into individual tracks.
I never use the cue sheet for burning because my cd player cant detect preemphasis anyway. As far as I know the Oppo is the only newer player that can.
Anyways, the WW track is going to mate up better with the digital Castle than with the vinyl rip you have. In fact, it's going to stick out like a sore thumb if the rest of the tracks are from an LP.