Techniques are described for securing a magnetic head to a support carrier for the head in a magnetic storage device (e.g., a tape drive apparatus or disk drive apparatus). One such technique involves temporarily supporting a magnetic head on a fixture which is adapted to cooperate with openings on the magnetic head to orient the head in a predetermined alignment attitude so that the head may be permanently mounted in the magnetic storage device. In another embodiment the fixture may be part of the magnetic storage device itself. There are also provided various embodiments of magnetic heads having openings for accessing a planar interface between the halves of a magnetic core within the head. By accessing this interface the magnetic head may be aligned in a predetermined alignment attitude.