You don't have to downgrade to 4.2b as that was a beta firmware only available to devs. You only need SHSH's for 4.2b which is possible to get if you had already pressed the 'make my life easier' button in cydia at the time apple were signing that firmware.
I have SHSH's for 4.2b having never been on that firmware. I even had 4.2.1 SHSH's stored when I was still on 4.1...