Re: Pickup selection
hetfield used distortions, also invaders, his explorer had dirty fingers, he also used a custom shop set on his flying v, then after their good gear was stolen james equipped his guitars with invaders to beef up the sound then he switched to EMGs
mustaine used the stock dimarzios on his bc rich guitars for KIMB and Peace Sells recordings, then he got his first custom jackson equipped with a jb on the bridge and only god and dave knows what he had on the neck, he changed neck pickups a couple times, but as a fact is known that dave used the Jazz, the 59, another JB on the neck slot and even a bill lawrence L500 which he used only for the rised rail polepieces as he could shred over them as extra frets
slash actually recorded most of his lines from appetite for destruction with a floyded bc rich warlock (i think), he only used his emblematic LP copy equipped with AP2 buckers for soloing, and even then that LP wasn't used for all of his solos, after appetite he used the LP a bit more but still recorded some riffs and solos with his Bc Rich, Slash's bc rich has been confirmed to had a duncan distortion on the bridge slot
so yeah going by that maybe the most accurate pickup combo you can go for will be a Distortion on the bridge with an AP2 on the neck, you might even put a slash sig on the neck slot, a marshall-ish amp and a tube screamer(you can use a clone or a tweaked screamer like the mxr berzerker or digitech bad monkey) are totally necessary for those tones
