James uses EMG 81s' at the bridge and 85s' at the neck last I heard. Although I'm sure he has his own model now. Kirk uses the same. Old school Metallica was about as basic as you can get. Gibson flying-V or explorer to a Marshall stack with high's and low's at 10 and mids at 0. I really doubt that either Kirk or James cared enough about their tone back then to actually change pickups.