Personally, I can’t imagine why someone would want to cut strings prior to fitting although I suppose you might if you were unfortunate enough to have a slotted headstock and they were too long to cope with.

Maybe it’s appropriate to offer a word of advice on fitting strings? For years, I used the obvious method of attaching them to the bridge, poking the end through the hole in the tuner whilst leaving just the right amount of slack to wind on. The pitfalls of this method are that it’s difficult to work out how much slack to leave - the amount varies with the thickness of the string - and, for things like mandolins, you often find that the loop end has come adrift whilst winding on.

In recent years I’ve been using a far simpler method. Attach the string to the bridge/tailpiece, keep on the tension whilst you stretch the string to the tuner and wind the string round the tuner post as many times as takes your fancy. Only then do you poke the string end through the hole and wind the string up to pitch. With this method, there’s much less winding involved and it’s a lot quicker. With loop end tailpieces, it’s also easier to keep up tension to stop the loops slipping off.

Incidentally, Newtone used to operate from a garage in Heanor which is almost in Notts.