For many years the only reel seat was a down locking. Then for some unkown reason it changed and all the current rod production are up locking reel seats.
I realize that this change would/could change the pivot point, but were all rods in the past considered wrong, was the new seat just a new gimmick to sell new rods. or was there a serious reason for the change ???
Tom
Back “in the day” most rods where either cane or fiberglass which both were a lot heavier rods than todays Graphite sticks. So a down locking seat helps move some of the weight farther back to relieve some of the tip heaviness that was inherent on the older rods. Now with light weight graphite and composite materials moving the reel closer to your hand with an up locking seat helps to make a for a better feeling rod.
I still use down locking seats on all my cane & glass rods, but 99% of my graphite rods are up locking except for some that reach out to 10’ length then a down locking seat will sometimes help balance it out better.
Steve
This is very true. I hear a lot of people poo poo the idea of a tip heavy rod. I had an old timer teach me - he showed me how some of the old Pflueger Reels had a place to drop lead shot into the center to balance a bamboo rod properly.
This was after I built a fiberglass rod with 3 oversized stripping guides and heavy duty snakes. Talk about tip-heavy! :eek: I rebuilt that rod to his standards and learned how to build a rod properly. 
I had an old timer teach me - he showed me how some of the old Pflueger Reels had a place to drop lead shot into the center to balance a bamboo rod properly.
That’s actually still true today. Anytime I build a float (centerpin) rod for a float customer which they are usually 14’ long they always give me the amount of weight they want me to epoxy into the butt of the rod to counter balance the tip weight.
Steve