No, I never did say I was creating a "parallel effects loop" as I did not necessarily believe (in the original post) that it was necessary to explain; I added this in view of another's post since it made it easier to filter out some of the responses — my apologies otherwise:)

I am not sure why you presume to assert that I assume "that everyone here uses some kind of cheap distortion pedal…" — there is no basis for this flaming.  I own OD pedals and have no such bias.

I do not have a Mini Mix and never said I own one — obviously, if I did I could/would have, otherwise, conduct such a basic test.

I am simply posting to:

1)  Inquire if, for technical reasons beyond my current understanding, in a basic setup as I have outlined above, in view of all the inquiries, whether it is necessary …. ie. whether I do in fact really need buy a Mini Mix, for example…

and

2)  add some positive feedback on the improving the breadth of implementing the Eventide Stompboxes given their excellent design and tone and the changes that are now fairly common in guitar amps.