Diodes in parrallel. Voltage drop adds up?

[jrc4558]

Or the electricity will flow through just one of them?
Essentially I don't want to extract the original parts from the board (it's a feedback loop clipper of a sort), but i want to use LEDs and silicone diodes interchangeably. So I thought, what would happen if, instead of pulling em out and wiring two pairs to the the switch, I would just wire it up so that the switch parallels every silicone diode with an LED. How would the clipping threshold change in this case?
Thank you.

[zachary vex]

the forward voltage will not add, but the diode with the lowest forward voltage will turn on first, and if there is enough current flow and their forward voltages are very close you might see both of them turn on.  if you put two diodes in series the forward voltage drops will roughly add together.  

if you put a silicon (not silicone, that's for breast implants and household repair) diode in parallel with an LED, it will turn on first because its forward voltage drop is much lower than any LED.  you could put the LED into the circuit first, then drop in the silicon diode in parallel with a spst switch (leave one leg of the diode connected all the time).  doing the reverse wouldn't help you much... you have to switch in the unit with the lower forward voltage... actually, using this method you could have a rotary switch Xpst which could select from X number of different diodes... just make sure the one that's permanently in circuit has the highest forward drop, like a blue LED or something even higher.

[jrc4558]

Thank you very much! Hehe, I'll remeber about silicon-silicone