An apparatus for providing an aligned coil for an inductive head structure using a patterned seed layer is disclosed. The present invention uses an aligned process where the base plate imprint is fabricated on an electrically insulating layer and the reversed image is fabricated and etched into the coil insulation material, e.g., hard bake photoresist to alleviate the problems associated with complete ion removal of the seed layer between high aspect ratio coils. The present invention would also not be prone to plating non-uniformities (voids), and would not be subject to seed layer undercutting in a wet etch step process.