1. No bass? Have you looked inside the speakers to make sure the woofers are completely wired up? No bass is not ordinary. The sub-woofer issue has many opinions on this forum--they are interesting and I recommend you read them. Since you are running HT, presumably you have a sub-woofer anyway. If you do, then you should be able to run your system in a 2.1 configuration (the 2 represents "two channel" the .1 represents the "subwoofer"--forgive me if you already knew that--your title says "Extreme NEWB" so I'm trying not to take anything for granted).
2. Don't worry about purism--only you and your family have to live with your audio decisions. I suggest you check out Blue Jeans Cable for all your current cabling needs. They are made well and won't gobble up your audio budget--you probably didn't realize you now have an ever present audio budget :-)
3. I will leave it to others to help you better match a 2-channel amp with your speakers, since I don't have any direct experience with them. It appears Dale Pitcher also made amplifiers, which should match well with his speakers--but they appear to have been very pricey and don't seem to come on the used market very often.
It would help if you could find out the power rating on your speakers. Then you could know how many watts you need to make them shine. Your HK AVR-1700 is rated at 100W/channel. If everything is working properly in your speakers--put your ear to each tweeter and woofer to make sure (with the volume at a low level)--then your bass problem is probably because your receiver doesn't have sufficient quality power to drive your speakers properly.
Just my two cents.
Enjoy the journey.
2. Don't worry about purism--only you and your family have to live with your audio decisions. I suggest you check out Blue Jeans Cable for all your current cabling needs. They are made well and won't gobble up your audio budget--you probably didn't realize you now have an ever present audio budget :-)
3. I will leave it to others to help you better match a 2-channel amp with your speakers, since I don't have any direct experience with them. It appears Dale Pitcher also made amplifiers, which should match well with his speakers--but they appear to have been very pricey and don't seem to come on the used market very often.
It would help if you could find out the power rating on your speakers. Then you could know how many watts you need to make them shine. Your HK AVR-1700 is rated at 100W/channel. If everything is working properly in your speakers--put your ear to each tweeter and woofer to make sure (with the volume at a low level)--then your bass problem is probably because your receiver doesn't have sufficient quality power to drive your speakers properly.
Just my two cents.
Enjoy the journey.