How do I copy material properties?

I want the arms and legs to be the exact same material (not just color). This inludes shininess, metal/wax, glow, hue, saturation, etc.

ideally: is there a way to set up a global material gadget (similar to "sculpture outer properties"?
So, everything that is "white cotton" only needs to be updated once and uniformly.

for example: I have similar materials on the arms and legs of a character, but not on the head. I would like to update one gadget for the arms and legs at the same time, without affecting the head. So if the pants and shirt are the same material and color, i would like to only have to update one gadget. does this make sense? this is not the same as live clone which requires cloning geometry as well as material.

I tried building my own gadget with sliders. But the max/min values of sliders don't apply very accurately to match, say, the 'hue' slider because it deals with 360 degrees.

any help is much appreciated!