Appliance folks? Glass stove top question

Hello all. Merry Christmas or whatever your persuasion may be. 

We have this GE double oven glass stovetop range tha was in the house when we got it. Cant say ive ever been a fan of it. Id rather have the cheapest gas stove. I actually do as much cooking as possible on my blackstone griddle outside, its so much better.  But anyways. The big eye with 3 sizes, the center goes nuclear, the middle is weak but works and the outside ring is heat-wise, between the inner and middle ring.  I don't recall it ever being different, but im tired of this hateful device destroying the center of my pans. Does this seem normal? Im afraid it is as there is more concentrated elements in the center piece as seen in the new part pic. 
here is mine on "high" which with these hateful glasstops is every setting. Full blast on then however long off to try and balance the heat. 

that center has destroyed a handful of nice pans and is effecting the seasoning on my cast iron. 
 

I was kicking around replacing the element to see if it would help but i can think of more fun ways to waste 100-150$. Is this normal or does this seem off?

I hate glass top. I gave mine away and put in an old fashioned element one. 

Looks to me like the element is working as designed based on your pics. The wires in the element are more closely spaced in the center and outer elements which would result in more heat there than the middle ring. I wonder if you could disable the center element by unplugging something and see if that works to be more gentle on your big pans?

I also hated my glass top stove. It's easy to clean but other than that inferior in every other way to gas.

I have been living with an induction glass top for the past 8 years.  I'm never going back to gas or electric coil. 

My "dailys" are a large and a smaller cast iron skillets and a couple of sizes of metal sauce pans. 

Super fast heat. Grease fires are an impossibility. Super control-ability of heat. The surface never gets/stays hot making it great for little hands in the house. 

No help to you, and not trying to convince you otherwise - but I’ve used 3 different glass top non-induction stoves and had 0 issue with them whatsoever. Maybe they’ve all been higher quality units, but I’ve never had the issues people talk about. 

IMHO, not including induction, glass top electric>Good gas stove>cheap gas stove>>>cheap electric. 

Clearly, Ymmv. 

GE Profile glass top electric user for 18 years.  Never had an issue.  Biggest gripe is fine control over low heat settings.  Easy clean-up.  Looks great.  Only part I've had to replace in that time is the oven element.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

You point out another gripe of mine, it does not need to go above #2, but goes to 10. #2 will smoke canola oil and be so hot you burn whatever your cooking. So you really have to be easy on the controls to get a sweet spot. Usually 1.5. 
 

unfortunately, we dont have propane or natural has service. I'd have to have a tank installed, have gas delivered and plumb the house, i have no intention of doing that. 
id like to pull a coils out of the center but i doubt i could get it to work right. Are the elements tungsten? Regular steel? 

In reply to TJL :

Is life easier just using the smaller burners and not using the biggest burner? 

TJL said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

You point out another gripe of mine, it does not need to go above #2, but goes to 10. #2 will smoke canola oil and be so hot you burn whatever your cooking. So you really have to be easy on the controls to get a sweet spot. Usually 1.5. 
 

unfortunately, we dont have propane or natural has service. I'd have to have a tank installed, have gas delivered and plumb the house, i have no intention of doing that. 
id like to pull a coils out of the center but i doubt i could get it to work right. Are the elements tungsten? Regular steel? 

Yeah, mine isn't quite that bad.  Sounds like something is amiss with the control.

John Welsh said:

I have been living with an induction glass top for the past 8 years.  I'm never going back to gas or electric coil. 

My "dailys" are a large and a smaller cast iron skillets and a couple of sizes of metal sauce pans. 

Super fast heat. Grease fires are an impossibility. Super control-ability of heat. The surface never gets/stays hot making it great for little hands in the house. 

I do love the induction, but my style of cooking uses a lot of non-ferrous cookware.

TJL said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

You point out another gripe of mine, it does not need to go above #2, but goes to 10. #2 will smoke canola oil and be so hot you burn whatever your cooking. So you really have to be easy on the controls to get a sweet spot. Usually 1.5. 
 

unfortunately, we dont have propane or natural has service. I'd have to have a tank installed, have gas delivered and plumb the house, i have no intention of doing that. 
id like to pull a coils out of the center but i doubt i could get it to work right. Are the elements tungsten? Regular steel? 

So just throwing this out there because I wasn't sure if a house we were looking at could have gas service. Suburban propane wants a grand to deliver and install a full 500 gallon tank. Depending on where your kitchen is located in the house/on the property, it might be worth it in the long run or during a remodel.

I seriously considered it at my current house but my patio is in the way.

Having a glass electric cook top for the very first time, mine isn't quite as crazy as yours. It's also got options on both of the Super burners for "low" and "high", meaning regular burner or turbo burner. I did learn the hard way not to just throw tortillas directly on the burner though. After 25 years of broken and temperamental electric coils, I won't go back to them. 

We have a smooth top range, and it is thankfully not designed like that. What about using a disc of steel that stays on the burner and your pan sits on top of that? Seems like it might even out the heat and steel shouldn't be too expensive. 

Ok. I'm an appliance tech of fifteen years. That's normal. You'll never get it to be the same brilliance. The middle filament is not the same as the outer and the inner. The switch only provides voltage. The burner is an on/off switch.  Either it's got all the volts, or none. The "dial" on the switch only varies the amount of time the burner is on to regulate temperature. 
 

get used to it. 
gas cooktops are only 70% efficient. 
traditional electric is only 85%. 
induction is 100%. The future is induction. 
 

Thanks all. Ive been using one of the other burners and getting along with it ok, just have to get used to it. Its not quite big enough but at least the coils are evenly spaced. Im re-seasoning my cast iron now so hopefully they wont have the middle burned out again. 

EastCoastMojo said:

We have a smooth top range, and it is thankfully not designed like that. What about using a disc of steel that stays on the burner and your pan sits on top of that? Seems like it might even out the heat and steel shouldn't be too expensive. 

I was going to do that, but for some reason I never get around to it.

I figured a stainless disc between the pan and stove should buffer out the searing hot pulses.

In reply to Hungary Bill :

Here ya go!

I hated ours when we first bought it, I am used to it and it works great.  Oh, don't leave the tea kettle on high and let the water boil out of it.   You will crack the glass.  Ask me how I know....

I have to say, the super cheap GE range (glasstop) that was in my house when I bought it 2 years ago works VASTLY better than eye-watering, high end BOSCH (glasstop) I had in my apartment in Tulsa.