The design, fabrication and performance of an experimental thin film recording head is described which has 25 μm and 125 μm track width magnetoresistive (MR) read elements combined with a single turn thin film inductive write head. The MR read elements are shielded to provide high linear resolution with an equivalent read gap of 1/2 μm and are internally biased by means of a permanent magnet film in the gap. The best head performance with a 0.5 μm air bearing on a high performance disk was: write current of 400 mA peak, isolated pulse readback signal of 40 mV peak per mm of track width at 10 mA sense current, with a 6 db density of 440 flux changes per mm (11 kfci).