Provided herein is an apparatus, including a magnetically soft underlayer (SUL); an interlayer stack overlying the SUL, wherein the interlayer stack comprises a seed layer of an fcc material; and a perpendicular magnetic recording layer overlying the interlayer stack, wherein a thickness of the SUL in combination with a distance of the SUL from the perpendicular recording layer is sufficient to orient a total magnetic field corresponding to a magnetic transducer head at an angle of about 45°.