A trimmed upper pole piece for a magnetic write head, said pole piece having a tapered profile that is widest at its trailing edge. Such a pole piece is capable of writing narrow tracks with sharply and well defined patterns and minimal overwriting of adjacent tracks. The necessary taper is produced by using NiCr, NiFeCr, Rh or Ru as write gap filling materials which have an etch rate which is substantially equal to the etch rate of the other layers forming the pole piece and are highly corrosion resistant. As a result, the write gap does not protrude to mask the effects of the ion-beam etch used to form the taper.