This is an interesting one. I didn't use a lot of bots but I had some support from a friends who has a lot of SP and his votes got my posts some visability and followers. He transfered his SP to minnowbooster for a couple of weeks and I really felt is. I still got some votes from followers in my niche but you don't get up there in the hot lists anymore and you feel it.

I'm curious how your experiment will turn out. I understand why everyone uses bots but I'm not a fan. It promotes good content but also allows abuse and a lot of visability to bad content.