Now to a less snarky reply than I gave above...
Yes, MIDI CCs and patch memories are very useful, but they come at a price, in terms of money and in other ways. Patch memories and MIDI CCs would have meant A/D converters for all knobs and sliders, and D/A converters for all parameters, which would have added to the cost. There's no way the Microbrute would have been so inexpensive with those features added. It would also have meant that the knobs and sliders would no longer form part of the sound generating circuits, so that their positions would no longer directly correlate to the actual sound you're playing. Not to mention possible zipper noise, etc. This is actually one of the things that attracted me to this synth in the first place (apart from the sound. And the price; it was the only synth I could afford at the time).
I use my Microbrute for solos and leads when I play live with my band, and for that purpose I only need two or three sounds that are all based on the same basic patch with a few tweaks that I have no problem setting up between songs. For my own music making at home, I tweak it until I get a sound that I like for a certain track, and then record the part into my DAW, doing any filter tweaks or other modulation live while recording. I usually have the notes already recorded as MIDI, so both hands are free to turn knobs on the synth. If I don't like the end result, I can always go back later and record it with a different patch.
I agree that the keyboard is awful, but at this price point, I'm glad to get a keyboard at all. Personally, I see my Microbrute as a module rather than a keyboard equipped synth, with a small keyboard thrown in as a bonus (even though I occasionally use the keyboard, even on gigs).
Regarding the filter, you can get much "purer" sounds if you set the individual waveform volumes below the 12 o'clock position. Beyond this, the oscillator starts to overdrive the filter, making the sound dirtier. Not that this is always a bad thing :-)
