They were not.

But if you can’t tell, does it need to be?

Yeah the Holy Grail should be if it’s new.

Your theory i’m afraid isn’t sound, now if you had a buffered bypass pedal in the chain such as a BOSS, you’d be in more luck… you should have some form of buffer regardless.

True bypass doesn’t ‘Stack up’ the same as Non-True Bypass doesn’t, each individual pedal will have a different effect, the point of true bypass is to take all the circuit out the chain and just run one pedal into the next as if the pedal you have bypassed wasn’t even there.

Non true bypass will keep the effect in the chain, but just cut out whatever effect it was supposed to be providing which is where You also have impedance matches to worry about, some pedals react differently with different impedances from the pedal before running into them… it’s rather complex and you’re at the mercy of the effect designers with no standards, this is why people have such problems with the Fuzz Face – Cry Baby combo.

Buffers are useful to prevent tone loss from excess cable which has a small amount of capacitance that can cut highs, it’s advisable to have one at the start of your chain and one at the end (Say a BOSS Tuner at the Start and… whatever at the end).

If you notice tone suck with the Memory man, stick it in a True Bypass Loop, problem solved.

That’s just all the tip of the iceberg, you’ll have to do some indepth reading if you really want to understand it, but best to just play it by ear in my opinion.

I think I misunderstood your question a little. You are right that two non-true bypassed pedals will effect the chain differently, I thought you were saying a True Bypass pedal would somehow Counteract the effects of the non-true bypass pedal, which it will not.

Yeah the beano would prefer being before the buffer due to its impedances, old Germanium effects like that and Fuzz Faces like to be first in the chain, hence the Fuzz Face – Wah issue.

Yeah you have a True Bypass Holy Grail, that’s effectively 8 Poles being used, i’m not to ‘up’ on my modern EHX Effects, but that sounds normal, they atleast use Relays or Buffers now if not True Bypass.

With the memory man, you’ll probably notice a loss of highs basically due to its inductance from staying in the chain at all times, you may find it favourable, maybe not, as I said, stick it in a True Bypass loop and it’ll effectively be True Bypass and you wont have to worry about it.