Pickups will work for many years if used under normal playing conditions. Pickups start breaking when handled improperly, excessive moisture or humidity, removing covers and dozens of other problems. Please remember if a pickup is non-functional, it doesn’t always mean that it needs to be rewound. There may be other problems that exist so check for poor solder connections, oxidized jacks, shorted potentiometers and faulty switches. Often magnets are demagnetized, put in backwards, out of phase to name a few other solvable problems.