Another sonic feature of dreadnoughts is that the bass is so deep and powerful, it's great if you don't have a bass player, but if you do, the bass and guitar are competing for the same frequencies...

It's nice to have that terrific separation between bass and treble when fingerpicking. But you still get it with a medium sized guitar, just not so deep.

A few years ago I played my dreadnought in jazz style (Cabaret) cause it was the only working guitar w a pickup I had at the time. I found that for jazz chording, it wasn't very good because the complex harmonics of jazz chords don't sound very good in a huge-thudding-bass context. In fact, they sound like you're trying to play jazz chords on an electric bass. My Martin O-18, in contrast, voices jazz chords beautifully because the "bass" strings are really midrange, so it's great that it doesn't have the broad tonal range of a dreadnought. Leave the bass sounds to the basses.

W-O