中国古代有“四大名琴”之说，齐桓公的“号钟”，楚庄公的“绕梁”，司马相如的“绿绮”和蔡邕的“焦尾琴”。这蔡邕的“焦尾琴”还有一段有趣的故事。
蔡邕是汉朝（公元前206——公元220）末年，一个大学问家，在编写历史典籍方面贡献非常大，并且很懂音乐，又是一个出色的音乐家。
有一次，蔡邕路过吴县这个地方，有一个人正在做饭，架起一口大铁锅，下面正在烧火，柴火在烈焰中噼噼啪啪的一阵作响，火势正旺。蔡邕在旁边经过，忽然发现一块上好的梧桐木正在燃烧，他知道梧桐木是作琴最好的材料了，这样烧掉非常可惜，于是不顾火势正猛，连忙把这块木板抽了出来，掸灭上面的火，他一边仔细端详着这块烧焦的木头，一边连声说“可惜，太可惜了”他这种举动，把烧火的人弄懵了，蔡邕解释说：“这块木头是做琴的好材料，烧掉实在是太可惜了。”烧火的人笑了“原来如此，既然您这么喜欢，就拿去好了。”蔡邕高高兴兴的把这块木头拿回了家，精心的制作了一张古琴，他把烧焦的部分放在琴的尾部，并给他取了一个极为雅致的名字“焦尾琴”。
Among the Four Great Guqin in Chinese music history, the one named Tail-burnt has its interesting legend.
Cai Yi, an outstanding historian and musician in the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), once found that a cook was using a piece of paulownia wood, the first-class material to make Guqin, to cook his meal. To everyone's surprise, Cai dragged the wood out of the fire with his bare hands. After explaining the function of paulownia wood to the cook, Cai happily took the wood home and made a refined Guqin. Because the wood was burnt at its part of tail, it was later named Tail-burnt Guqin.
Guqin is also called the seven-stringed Qin. The body is a long and narrow sound box made of wood. It is 130cm long, 20cm wide, and 5cm thick. The surface is generally made of paulownia wood or China fir, and has seven strings stretched along it. On the edges are 13 inlaid jade markers. Catalpa wood is used for the base, and there are two holes, one big and one small (called the "phoenix pool" and "dragon pond", respectively) to emit the sound. The fingering techniques are known as recital, rubbing, plucking, concentration, floating notes and harmonious notes (same measure, five measure and octave). The instrument is rich in tone color, with airy, floating notes, and simple and solid scattered notes.