MD remembers the last kit when it's powered down, even if the kt isn't saved. Very cool feature when the electricity break occurs. But the kit isn't saved in it's kit slot in the kit menu. So if one changes to another kit, he loses the tweaked kit, because it isn't saved. This is very logical.
Now, the parameter locks are done to the pattern. No need to save them, they 'saved' automaticly. The original writer is just mixing the kit-releated sound changes and parameter-related. The pattern is as it should, it's just the kit that have changed. He was working with song-editor; if I recall correctly MD behaves like this: if powered down from songeditor, the first pattern loaded after reboot will be A01. So while this occurs the original kit from original pattern is lost. Voila. It's just that the kit isn't saved. So, always save your kit. MD remembering the last kit when powered down is just something extra for electricity breaks I guess (it is not really saved).