I have a 1990 Cornue Grand Palais series range that I purchased used. I disassembled the unit completely for a thorough cleaning and I have some observations that may be of use to some of you. First the bad. The plating work on the trim (nickel in my case), is pretty bad. I took the pieces to a plating shop to be reworked, and the staff were not impressed. You can see that most of the pieces were finished with a belt sander. Because the base metal of the pieces is steel, over time, the backs of the pieces where they contact the stove enamel will begin to rust because of trapped moisture. This destroys the plating, and eventually works around to the front of the trim. The screws for the backs of the drawer slides were loose or missing, and the right side door slides had the back mounting holes drilled 1/2 inch too high, causing that door to be mis-aligned and to have a tendency to slide open. The body of the drawers is galvanized steel. One of mine had significant rust. There must be condensation issues. The gas piping was not deburred after being cut. Two pieces were cut too short, so the builder wasn't able to adequately tighten the joints. There were a few missing screws in the unit and one missing bolt. The right hand base was 1/8" too short, so they added shims between the base and the oven unit. Unfortunately the shims they added were only 1/16" high. An electrical connection on one of the main electric burner elements was never tightened correctly. There was obvious arcing at that point. There are no gaskets on the oven doors. This means that hot gasses will escape out the front and you will get deposits inside the upper door frame and front of the unit, where they will collect under the drip tray handles. There is no easy way to replace the chrome oven surrounds if they become damaged. You must COMPLETELY disassemble the unit, including removing/dismantling the controls (electric or gas) behind the control doors. This requires that the gas piping be disconnected, the top removed, the ovens separated, the sides removed, and then the inner sheet metal.. you get the idea. The knobs have plastic bushings to adapt to the small control stalks. One of mine distorted from the heat, so the knob doesn't stay square. Like many other "pro" ranges, there are many spots where panels meet in such a way that it is inevitable that fluids will seep in and cause problems. The chrome panels fronting the oven are typical, cleaning products just dribble straight down into an uncleanable gap. The cast aluminum door panels are very cool when perfectly buffed out, but inevitably, they will wither away with use. Sooner or later someone will use a cleaner incompatible with aluminum and wreck the finish. It has taken me several hours on a bench buffer to bring them back. The hinges in the door have a weak point: when you open the door all the way and put any pressure down, there is a small piece of metal in each hinge that is stressed. One of mine has a small crack that I will have to weld if I can't find a replacement. The venting in the back of the unit is poorly done. The vents terminate before the top of the backsplash, so cooking gases sort of spread out and coat the upper third of the unit. Not a major problem, but causes quite a bit of dirt buildup. The brass burner tops look great when polished, but that doesn't last long unless you are a fanatic about cleaning. I didn't even know they were brass until I saw it on a website. I polished mine on the buffer and hey look! brass! Unfortunately, they get pitted, so to really make them look great, you'd have to chuck them in a lathe and remove some metal. This would give them a limited lifetime. The racks are a bit flimsy. The chrome on mine had started to fail. The transformer for the spark ignitors was only grounded to the base of one unit. If you are having a problem with ignitors, make a pigtail to directly attach the ground wire from the transformer to one of the oven's base mounting screws. People are always saying that their high-end stoves are "built like tanks". No they aren't. Sure, with all that metal you need a stiff frame to bolt it all to, but individually, the ovens are pretty conventional. I've seen the same on Wolf commercial. You want heavy duty? Buy an 1895 wood burner. Ok, so now the good: The brass burner hardware is the neatest I have ever seen: a brass tube with a threaded adjuster sets the air flow, much nicer than the stamped metal shutters on Wolf commercial and others. The gas knobs are cast metal, plated. The have a nice heavy feel. The gas control hardware looks quality. All the wiring is sleeved with high temp silicone. Durable and looks nice. Mine was still in great shape. The porcelain held up very well with only a couple hardly visible dings. The electric controls are heavy duty euro style stuff. They must have stiffer regs over there. The electric switches are industrial quality. With some serious cleaning, I was able to take this 18+ year old range back to almost new condition. I paid $2k for the unit, and I am satisfied with it at that price. From what I can see looking at the new units at Williams-Sonoma, there is little visual difference with my unit, so I believe some of my comments would still apply. The bottom line here is, the cooking functions of the unit seem to be just fine, and have held up well over time. However, the range is not as easy to clean and maintain as a modern unit, and the build quality leaves much to be desired. The style fits perfectly with the kitchen of my Victorian, so I am willing to make some compromises in function. To any prospective buyers, I would say that just about any $1000 range from Sears will do a great job of cooking, operate reliably and be easy to clean and cheap (relatively) to service. Cornue makes their ranges "like they used to", but sometimes there's a good reason why they don't make them like that anymore. A purchase like this is about style. If you need a unit with two ovens, and (like mine), four burners, a flat cooktop and grill, the price of entry will probably be at least $5k. How you justify the extra $35k is all about style.

Why not the Wolf 24" induction and 15" gas? I have that setup though my induction is Gaggenau which I had sent from Europe with all the attendant rigamarole because there were no 24"s here at that time. I don't know anything about the Wolf induction, other than that they make it, so you'd have to check the power, element sizes and arrangement, and controls suit you. Do they have a 24" gas, to flip the numbers? I use the induction much more, though I expected to use the gas more than I do--part of that is using ovens more, though, since I do all my vegetables in the CSO. Hm... Just thought of that! I keep the kettle on the gas. I put the kettle on the induction to boil the water. :) The Wolf 15" gas is a little weird. I hesitated on the shape, but find the burners more than adequate, and everything else about it fit my limitations best. It's one small and one medium burner--does that work for your copper? An alternative, if budget isn't an issue, is the Gaggenau Vario 400 series of 15" dominoes. The controls are on the cabinet apron, so you can make the whole installation look like a rangetop if you want. There's a ton of power and flexibility there. I was about to buy them six years ago when there was a huge price change. That setup would have been squeezing the space, so it worked out better anyway, though I occasionally miss some fancy schmancy features I had to give up. They're really fab if you have the space and money for what you want.

@r, I thought I would chime in here to just say that I don’t think you are “obsessing“ at all regarding the use of knobs in this case. One of the most crucial variables in any kind of industrial design is the way we interface or interact with whatever the product is. Most of us utilize capacitive touch controls or infrared type touch controls on a constant basis with everything from iPads, smart phones, as well as any number of house appliances. But I would suggest that your instinct regarding cooktop or rangetop controls makes a lot of sense. Consider the difference in using a wall oven versus a cooktop. Most cooks in the kitchen can get the opportunity to wipe their hands in order to use touch capacitive controls on a wall oven. Of course, the case could be made that turning a simple dial, can be more intuitive, then going through a series of menus to get to where you want to go, since in the end, the mission of the wall oven has not really changed very much since our grandparents time which is essentially to bake the cake or roast the chicken. The reason I suspect that cook tops and range tops, as well as ranges are a particularly good candidate for knobs is due to the fact that the controls are often placed on a horizontal plane. Many people, especially those who are new to induction appliances for example, have learned a hard lesson as the very sensitive touch controls do not always take kindly to steam, water, droplets, and oil or gravy splatters. It is not hard to imagine why this is problematic because if you put any of these liquids on top of your smart phone screen, you would discover that the touch controls that works so beautifully such as the ones I’m using right now on my iPhone to create this post do not take kindly to having these substances on top of them. There are lots of examples of folks who have touch capacitive controls on these horizontal locations where the entire appliance is either shut down or thrown off its game. Of course, the majority of modern products that have knobs do not use the analog/mechanical controls of knobs of the past, but are in fact, “knobs“ that interface with micro control boards behind them. Still, there is an entire field of design that studies user interaction, and I do think that, at least, in some instances, such as with cooktops, knobs actually, do make a lot of sense. One can certainly debate where the best location for those knobs would be to avoid getting splatters on them since Cleaning knobs is not exactly, a fun time for most folks. Some people would assume that installing Touch Sensitive controls in all sorts of consumer products that once used knobs, levers, and buttons, is simply a design trend, and I’m sure there is truth to that. But a little voice inside also suggests to me, that one of the reasons they have moved away from knobs and especially the electromechanical kinds used in the past, is due to the cost of manufacturing. I do not have a data set to support this theory, but if you consider the labour and the bewildering amount of copper wiring that went into something such as a 1950 electric stove, some of which had lots of extra features, you can begin to imagine the cost savings of having a micro “motherboard“ taking the place of all that complex analogue electrical structure. I truly enjoy all of the benefits and possibilities that I have with my smart phone, laptop, iPads, etc. But I do think your instincts for knobs are not without merit, because sometimes, appliance designers attempt to answer questions that no one ever asked. My two. Cents 🤔.

I'm not helpful but looking for the same feedback... would love to hear if you got any info