In a disk drive actuator head stack assembly, magnetic transducers including magnetoresistive (MR) read heads are connected to a current source and configured to provide an MR sensor current to each MR head wherein the direction of current flow for the MR sensor current in each MR head is the same relative to the actuator for all of the MR heads in the actuator head stack. This configuration allows all of the MR heads in the head stack assembly to be initialized simultaneously by applying a homogeneous magnetic field to the head stack assembly, thus providing the capability of initializing the MR heads at the actuator or disk drive level rather than requiring that the MR heads be initialized individually.