We analyze, both physically and numerically, certain effects of shear wave propagation in orthorhombic phenolic. This industrial laminate provides a physical model for the study of wave propagation in orthorhombic media and has been used in several laboratory experiments. Recently, we observed polarity reversals on seismogram traces along two profiles through a sphere of phenolic. The observations were attributed to the rapid variation of polarization in the neighborhood of slowness-surface conical points (point singularities). We now present results of numerical modeling experiments that show amplitude variations similar to those observed in the physical modeling. For receiver positions along a symmetry plane of the anisotropic medium, these amplitude variations may indeed be attributed to rapid polarization changes due to conical points. For a profile crossing a symmetry plane, however, the numerical examples indicate that relatively smooth variations of the displacement can result in rapid amplitude variations (polarity reversals) on seismogram traces, depending on the particular source-receiver configuration used. The computed seismograms also show characteristic Hilbert-transform-type wave forms due to wave front folding. This folding is a direct result of slowness-surface conical points, and the related wave form characteristics may be used in future experiments to detect conical-point effects. The detectability of these wave form variations depends strongly on the frequency range emitted by the source, i.e., the transmitting transducer. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996