I would not do it unless it was a mass market product that I needed to sell a billion of...
I don't think using cheap tricks like this is a good idea for the hobbyist, there are too many traps.
Though I must say single transistor switchmode power supplies and other Chinese mass market electronics "hacks" are very interesting despite being completely bootleg. And I suppose you can impress your boss if you design a product and save him 50 cents... so long it does not turn out the diodes are shady and you get a bunch of recalls. A 3.3 LDO can be gotten for like 1$. Not to mention it will block out noise and handle power supply problems better.
Don't be afraid to throw some ICs at your projects... I know people on this forum are vicious when it comes to saving money (I bet you can find a 30 page argument somewhere about if a 3cent carbon resistor is necessary in some one off circuit) but you don't need to think like a Chinese counterfitter engineer.
I would giggle right now if someone can list some examples of how circuit modifications were performed (during manufacture) to make broken/out of spec parts work, especially if it was out of the box thinking.