I`d draw the line at reverb and delay, just as manuel has done. When you add compression/enhancement/eq your changing the structure of the patches sound. With delay/reverb on the most basic settings your adding copies of the original sound multiple times.
I can see where you are coming from aswell, I think its all down to personal tastes, probally why it makes a good discussion.
With the unique external gear comment, I was meaning if he passed the original sound through and the output was nothing like the original then that`d be misleading. An example could be using a vocoder.
Any hoo manuels programming skills dont need the use of powerfull effects to make them sound good. The ones I have are amazing.
