Hello, I have heard from various articals (and I can't remember which ones) where blown diodes and or mosfets are used in certain applications to provide a "smoothing" effect to the signal. Is there any truth to this?

 

By "Blown", do you mean damaged?

 

That's a real knee slapper. Using damaged components for a purpose that was never intended.

 

An open resistor in parallel or shorted resistor in series may be helpful too!

 

An open resistor in parallel or shorted resistor in series may be helpful too!

Outstanding observation! A Noble Prize for you.

 

where blown diodes and or mosfets are used in certain applications to provide a "smoothing" effect to the signal. Is there any truth to this?

Sounds like complete baloney.

 

Ahhh, ye of little faith.

 

Probably only beneficial if they were connected using oxygen-free pure copper wire while connected to an isolated power supply.

 

Should one use a diode that has failed open-circuit or one that has failed short-circuit? Or does it depend on which way the signal is flowing?

 

Transistor devices that no longer function as they should do sometimes still have a junction that would act like a diode.
My experience with that has been using a power transistor with a failed collector function as a photo-sensor, after the metal top of the case was removed. The base-emitter conduction varied quite a lot as the intensity of light on it was varied..
It was not useful, but it was interesting and educational.

 

My experience with that has been using a power transistor with a failed collector function as a photo-sensor, after the metal top of the case was removed.

Similar to one transistor radio back in the day, they used the germanium OC71? transistors that had a black painted coating, If one of these had the coating flake off, When you opened the back of the radio in broad daylight the volume would suddenly soar when the transistor became a photo-sensor.
Otherwise it worked fine.

 

I suppose a pile of destroyed components on a table could be considered -- Art!

 

Similar to one transistor radio back in the day, they used the germanium OC71? transistors that had a black painted coating, If one of these had the coating flake off, When you opened the back of the radio in broad daylight the volume would suddenly soar when the transistor became a photo-sensor.
Otherwise it worked fine.

I remember those - you could also buy an OCP71 photo-transistor which was about 10 times the price of the normal OC71.

 

Here's an artistic use.