Walking Into A Brick & Mortar High End Audio Store

Discussing "who" vs. "whom," although often a question not lacking in difficulty, seems less likely to perturb domestic tranquility than discussing the other tangent this thread went off on. So I'll mention that I believe Courant is correct, and it should be "whom."

The spelling and grammar checker of Microsoft Word in Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 does not flag an error for either "who" or "whom." But using the "he vs. him" trick described at the end of this article, one would say (albeit a bit clumsily) "for him English is not his first language," not "for he English is not his first language," and therefore "whom" would be correct.

Best regards,
-- Al

According to Ernest Hemingway, it's "For Whom the Bell Tolls." But, more importantly, does the sound of that tolling bell sound better via tubes or solid state ?

Tubes, absolutely! Cryo'd brass is best; of course.

Re who/whom: I am glad the question became a diversion from "the other" topic. While I may be willing to concede since I have never known Al to be factually incorrect about anything, I still think that, at the very least, a case can be made for either. We could dig a little deeper and explore things like the exceptions to the "rules" when the word in question is either the object or the subject of the preposition, but just like in the debates about the audibility of tweaks, I actually enjoy and prefer to leave room for a bit of ambiguity and mystery. BTW, my Microsoft Word program does, in fact, flag an error for "whom". :-)

Speaking of bells and a bit of trivia that some may find interesting: when real church bells became a thing of the past due to the use of electronic amplified bell sounds as is common today, some of the now out of work Italian bell makers were hired by the Selmer (France) musical instrument company to make the bells for their premium line of saxophones. Most of the great players use(d) these instruments.

Regards.

Excellent story Frogman. As a matter of fact, the Selmer Mark VI saxophone has been used by some of the greatest players out there, including Coltrane, Rollins, Getz, Gordon, and Konitz. The "Selmer sound" is quite beautiful.

"whom" - to be used as object of the preposition, I believe.