The image is small because I shrank it. It was a HUGE pic after it was rendered. Haven't really used bumps alot, but I'll try.
I just used the first wood texture I could find for the platform. But...

Cool. I found that setting and increasing the light angle to about 11 got the shadows blurred just enough to look nice. Thanks so much.

Found the reflection blur as well.

Now I can go back...

Okay. here is another render. Using a directional light with raytracing shadows did help alot!
Thanks again for the suggestion.

I also made the connector a little larger. Looks proportional now....

Thanks for the replies.
I'll go turn down any reflection i have for the cord, and replace my lights and shadows and post another render soon.

They are on production with HD 720 resolution. I always do my final renders on production setting. Maybe with a little custom additions as well.

Here is a render of some older generation iPod headphones.
Im pretty satisfied with the model..
But im not sure on the lighting.. I must not have this down correctly.. lol

I used mental ray...

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-maya/modeling-and-texturing-a-photorealistic-usb-cable-with-maya-and-mental-ray-part-1/

Here is a link to the tutorial.

Found a really nice tutorial on this USB cable and figured I would give it a try. I really like how it turned out.. still got a couple of tweaks here or there..

I appreciate all comments!
...

Here is another render using some lighting and after adding some bevel to the sharp edges.

My goal is to make this arcade stick look as real as possible..

I also converted the ball on the...

My current W.I.P.
A street fighter arcade stick.
Have only spent about an hour on it so far.. still learning about texturing correctly, using reflections, etc..

I appreciate all feedback. Thanks!