Move over, R2D2. Make way for L1037.

Steinway pianos have at least as much personality as robots -- and similar names. "Note By Note: The Making of Steinway L1037" is a feature-length documentary that lovingly chronicles the birth of a Steinway concert grand through its hand-crafted journey from hardwood forest to concert hall.

Along the way of the manufacturing process, it also takes the opportunity to plumb the unique relationships between musician and magnificent instrument.

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'Note by Note'

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

• Rating: PG in nature
• Web site: 'Note by Note'

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Each piano's creation spans 12 months (eight weeks in the "conditioning room" alone), requiring 12,000 parts and 450 craftsmen. Director Ben Niles' most wonderful scenes are his portraits of those expert artisans in action. With such distinctive job titles as "bellyman," "grand finisher," "rough tuner" and "final tone inspector," they range from Haitian to Croatian, and their wonderfully proprietary attitudes ("This is MY piano!") reflect the fact that Steinway has been building pianos the same painstaking way for 150 years.

Eight or nine different types of wood, needing perfect gradations of malleability for the bending of the piano's inner and outer rims. Aging is next, then the case and keyboard construction, plus hammers and multiple tunings. The camera captures the gorgeous craft of hand-chipping 88 slots, readying each note's strings, nails and glue.

This end result is an idiosyncratically distinctive instrument in every cases, as assorted musical luminaries attest and demonstrate in the doc. We visit the Steinway "bank" on West 57th Street in Manhattan, where classical pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Helene Grimaud, plus jazz pianists Harry Connick Jr., Marcus Roberts and Hank Jones, try them out -- very different musicians looking for very different things.

Gershwin seems to be the test-bridge that the classical and jazz folks have in common. My favorite moment is the ebullient Lang Lang picking out tantalizing bits of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov and holding forth on how to get the best "fit."

Steinway & Sons' high-end product, fashioned in Astoria, Queens, commands prices starting at $25,000. But $100,000 is more like it. The 150-year-old institution produces a mere 2,000 pianos a year, compared with some 100 a day produced by various competitors.

Too much time is spent with fussy Aimard, but this is a fascinating documentary that everybody -- not just pianists -- can savor. To make the point, various "common folk" are seen buying pianos and installing them in their living rooms (sometimes hilariously).

Admittedly, it's a feature-length commercial for Steinway. But hey, nobody else makes 'em like this. Steinway is a kind of last hurrah for what is not just a grand (or upright) piece of equipment, but the crucial link between the human soul and the music that comes from it. This is a lovely documentary on one of the last holdouts in a techno-centric world.

Yamaha, eat your foreign trade-deficit heart out.

Opens Friday at Harris Theater.