Eric Clapton's playing and sound with Cream got me hooked as a guitar player for life.
In a conversation with Jed recently, I pointed out that apart from a Wha Wha peddle Clapton did not use effects. His overdriven sound was natural (valve) amp distortion.
During my meanderings on the Internet I found an Eric Clapton stomp box which emulates a half dozen or so of Clapton's signature sounds. Cool! Players, sell your Gibson and Fender, Vox AC30, Marshall stacks et al, just make sure you play air guitar through powered Alesis studio monitors, don't play any bum notes........

I have found a couple of interesting devices from Behringer. One is the Tube Ultragain MIC200, RRP of $139.99AUD. Meant to impart a warm tube glow to miked recording. I figured that there was potential for a valve preamp for my guitar amps, after all there are hybrid amps with valve preamp sections popping up like weeds in every music retailer's garden!
I'm obviously not the only one who saw this potential. Chris from Guitars Plus in Sandringham, which is a guitar-only type shop has a stockpile of these things.
With judicious adjustment of the unit, solid state amps can be coaxed into that warm valve overdriven sound without that corny artificial distortion, and to offer up that glorious feedback sound.

Getting back to EC and wha wha, I had a salesman at an outer South Eastern music shop livid and almost ready to come to blows because I stated that it is criminal that a reissue 60's wha pedal costs $150 to $300 when they are basically just a tone control in a pedal (perhaps with a cheap preamp circuit). Just because a brand name is put on what was a basic cheap effect unit on the strength of the fact that Clapton or Hendrix used one doesn't suddenly improve it's worth five to tenfold, which is what the salesman was defending.
And all this while he was selling me a Behringer Hellbabe HB01 Wah wah pedal!
RRP $69.99 AUD, this pedal has a SOLID metal casing, a boost, a parametric type Q control, and other knobs to control various parameters.
So why settle for an over-priced Crybaby?
The best sounding Wah I ever used was this huge aluminium-cased Fender, which unfortunately wasn't built tough enough. When it packed up, parts were unobtainable for a proper repair. It still resides with me, and I still live in hope....