Get Eric Clapton’s Cream-era guitar tone from just one pedal

Barcelona-based pedal- and board-maker Aclam has announced the arrival of the Woman Tone pedal – a new stompbox that is designed to emulate Eric Clapton’s iconic Cream-era tones.

As Guitar World writer Chris Gill recently explained, Clapton’s Woman Tone sound was created with a 1964 Gibson SG Standard (adorned with the now-famous The Fool artwork), alongside a 1966 Marshall JTM45 and a Marshall 1960B cabinet. 

Perhaps the most immediately recognisable example of the Woman tone in action is Cream’s audacious hit Sunshine Of Your Love, which used the SG’s volume on 10 and tone on 1 to wring a vocal-like warmth from the instrument.

Aclam’s take on the Woman Tone doesn’t literally cram an SG and a Marshall into a standard pedal, but it comes close. Key to the design is the Woman Tone knob, which acts like the tone knob on a guitar – allowing you to roll off the treble as you rotate to the left. 

There’s also a built-in pickup simulator to enable the pedal to act more like an SG circuit with a PAF pickup and this is buffered to help it react more consistently across different pickup types and effects chain placement. The demo above showcases a number of different instruments running through the pedal and, on the surface, the results are convincing.

Elsewhere, there are controls for Volume and Gain and the right footswitch engages the pedal. The left footswitch is used to activate the Woman Tone dial, allowing you to switch directly in and out of the pedal’s default Plexi-style sound into your Woman Tone setting.

Finally, there’s an internal DIP switch that allows you to select between a darker or brighter tonal bias for the pedal as a whole. 

The whole thing is given a considerable air of authenticity thanks to the new artwork created by Marijke Koger, who was leader of The Fool art collective and the artist who decorated Clapton’s original ‘The Fool’ SG. 

The Woman Tone pedal retails for €296.70 (approx. $310). Head to Aclam for more information.