Synergistic Red Fuse ...

If the fuses are directional and it matters, it should not be a mystery.

Do what OP suggested early on. If you have a question or issue go to the source (Synergistic Research) ask your question and let the experts resolve it.

If you find out anything new of interest, please share with others here.

By the way, Geoffkait--in looking at your MD site, I presume your intent is to amuse and educate audiophiles. I appreciate your inventiveness and humor. Just wondering though--if I were to add your teleportation tweak or the intelligent chips to my shopping cart, do you then say, "Stop--enough--I don't actually take your money or send you anything. It's all a hoax, meant to educate the naive." Or, do you really take my money to commit the ultimate scam?  You may want to start a new thread on this, or you may choose silence, but please--let's get to the bottom of MD and your real mission.   

" "Al’s a bit of a fence sitter with things like this. "

My guess is, as an obviously very accomplished, seemingly altruistic, unbiased and knowledgeable EE who loves music and audio, (not to mention a very precise thinker and communicator), Al would rather make decisions that are consistent with the technical facts. So the more facts to base things on the better to help jump off the fence.

Just my gut assessment....

By the way that combination of things is very hard to find. Congrats to Al’s parents!

To sum up: I estimate the manufacturing cost of the fuses to be about 2 to 5 bucks, they're sold for $99 or so, and for my entire system (really the only way to realize your full enjoyment potential) is into $700 to $1000 territory. So much for "cheap" tweaks. If they don't break in by keeping them passing electrons for 170 hours (about a month of lots of hifi), you likely have them in backwards or they're not for you. The fuses work their mojo regardless of the standard fuse holders made from arguably less "special" and likely "non directional" metal…the description of why these do their job so well are obtuse and don't truly make much sense to "thee of lessor faith," and most of the faithful don't care since their systems were booted into the higher level "free flowing water" these fuses allow…notwithstanding the power supply, less precious metals and wires, and other gizmo designs causing some rapids downstream, and the ridiculous profit margins realized by a company that actually sells expensive painted aluminum bits for tonearms is the American Way. You go SR…please.

Jafreeman wrote,

"I have seven SR reds in my system that were placed in three phases, each of which sounded so right, I have not felt a need to flip them. I would discount directionality on the reds in favor of a long break in period."

That's nice.  I actually don't blame you for ignoring the directionality issue. Sounding right is relative. Most audiophiles probably think their systems just sound right.  You don't actually see too many audiophiles saying, gosh, my system really sucks.