They work very well as such, made with cross-connected Mogami mic cable.Ever open up a set of Monster Cables? They are exactly the same on both sides, so there is no directivity....at all.
The arrow direction was to aid the user of which way a cable might be running, like is this cable from the tape in or the tape out? Pretty hard to see the back end of a preamp or receiver. I put arrows on my own DIY cables for the very same reason. BTW, if you think a cable can work with the shield disconnected on one end, you are not in the know.
I've never messed with Monster ICs. Had some Audio Technica that were basically similar to coax 75 Ohm RF cable, bidirectional, later salvaged the connectors for a project.
My experience seems to indicate that capacitance matters, there are experiments I'd like to do to investigate different configurations with similar capacitances.