Carpentry and Woodworking - Kitchen Cabinet Hardware Replacement

When I removed the hardware from my cherry-wood kitchen cabinets I found that the brass base plate beneath the knobs/pulls had left a "bleached" mark on the wood surface of the cabinet. This is because, I think, the acid from the brass base plate bleaches the cherry wood. When you take the base plate out, the bleached outline of the base plate is extremely hard to remove when restaining the wood- especially cherry wood. After much repainting now with a cherry wood gel stain, seemed to do the job. Most of my guests do not seem to recognize the handiwork, but my eyes always can see the faint ghost of the bleached part of the base plate.....
End of the day, this was way too much work, just to change the hardware!
Cherry wood takes poorly to stain, even after much prepping of the surface for the new refinishing (I refinished the cabinets in the same natural cherry stain)...... :(