Crazy liking and not liking the own vocal work. Frustrated..

My guess is you're singing more relaxed now, easier and with more control and now your missing the grit or attitude that comes (sometimes) when you're straining too hard to sing. Three things come to mind:

1) find your sweet spot, warm up for a long time and find that spot where your voice is really warmed up and almost starting to tire out. Then record.

2) incorporate vocal practices that are aimed at controlling the grit. I don't know how to say this exactly, but there's a way to sound gritty and strained without actually being gritty and strained...make sense?

3) a glass of whiskey and a cigarette...enough said

That’s great, congrats on your 6 years!

So, I think the spirit of what Justin is saying still stands: try and let go of engineering and technique completely and just sing your ass off. Let it suck at first, if it sucks. Getting out of one’s own head while performing can be extremely beneficial.

If you think your 'old' voice is more appropriate for a track - sing with it. You know how to do it. It's like riding a bike. It's not like 'training" changes your voice. Training simply gives you more options and flexibility, and one of those options is to sing the way you use to.

HUGE respect, man. That is not easy to achieve. Congrats.

If you're looking for more "grit," you're probably looking for vocal cords that are dehydrated and less flexible, with a bit less control and a bit more "wildness" to them. You can hear the air and sometimes even increased harmonics with "drier-than-usual" vocal cords.

One way to achieve dehydrated vocal cords is as Tbone81 mentioned: whiskey and cigarettes (ETOH is a diuretic, and cigarettes provide hot, polluted air moving over the vocal cords repeatedly). But dehydration of the vocal box can be achieved in other ways, as well. Lots of black coffee with higher acid content is one way. Lots of black tea waaaaay oversteeped (with no milk or sugar) is another way. Pure Darjeeling or Assam can be great for this. In either case, don't drink any water or any other drink. You're intentionally trying to dehydrate your vocal cords and indeed, your body. And yes, singing a bunch will also dry out your vocal cords because there will be warm air moving over them.

There are more variables than just the above, but "dryer" vocal cords can get you a long way towards the character I think you're describing.

There's a psycho-acoustic effect that hearing our own voice has. Something about our ears and cranium hearing ourselves is unnatural. Therefore, we basically don't sound good to ourselves. I recall reading somewhere that even Elvis didn't like his own voice much. Certainly singers like John Lennon "knew" they weren't "great" singers.

Here's my suggestion, sing first thing in the morning after coffee, (or whatever you like). You're usually not thinking about details as much and it'll come out more natural.

Don't fret, you're in the middle of a process. Right now you're over-focused on how it sounds. It will pass, just do your best to find the emotion behind the lyrics.

The best singers are the ones you believe, not necessarily the ones who sound beautiful. Think about Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen. Tom Petty was one nasal mutha, but I could listen to the man all day. Some would say they can't sing for shit. I say they're the most expressive singers. and therefore, some of the best.

Imagine if your one of the few who’s range went up after time on a vent!

Between vocal coaches and speech pathologist I am amazed at the things that effect the human voice, learning how to talk again with a hole in my throat was about as difficult as learning to walk again ( they were pretty sure that would never happen).

Try cannabis edibles. Don't smoke it.

If high G is too nasal..."too much 1.5khz energy"...don't sing it. Change the key. Longer term you can talk about building your instrument MAYBE with a different blend that maybe you sing high G in a way you like better...how many high G's have you heard in pop or rock in the last 25 years? I digress...the simplest answer here is "doc, it hurts when I poke right here"...."stop doing that". You're writing a song...you're arranging it...why are there notes that you can't hit to your liking happening?

But, if you're feeling blue about it--do a cover...and go through the process of picking the RIGHT key to do the cover in...for your voice, your instrument as it exists TODAY. If you don't know how to do that--you have a bigger lesson to learn here. The number one job of a producer is to make sure everything is being cut in a key where the vocalist sounds good and/or is comfortable. The vocal is everything to a lot of people. Myself included. But, also--I think when self recordists have pysch issues with their own vocals, it's less about the actual vocal. It's the song. It's that the melody isn't very singable. Or it's much HARDER to sing than their instrument can handle (which is really the same thing grand scheme)...it's that the awkward fake drums in their arrangement don't feed the "flow" needed but they don't notice UNTIL the vocal can't lock in...that the lyrics don't have good open vowels where you need them...so, do a stripped down cover. See if your issues with your vocal are still there. Don't process it on the way in...that way you rule out electrically pooching it.