Improved magnetic devices have been fabricated by replacing the conventional seed layer (typically Ta) with a bilayer of Ru on Ta. Although both Ru and Ta layers are ultra thin (between 5 and 20 Angstroms), good exchange bias between the seed and the AFM layer (IrMn about 70 Angstroms thick) is retained. This arrangement facilitates minimum shield-to-shield spacing and gives excellent performance in CPP, CCP-CPP, or TMR configurations.