So I've come to enjoy to come to enjoy the color on the body. As I applied a few more coats more of the gold highlight in the stain became more evident, and it gives it a very nice effect, albeit it's very difficult to see in pictures.

I'm having an issue now where on the last coat of stain I applied, I started noticing it was leaving what looked like small dings in the body. I can use sandpaper to lightly sand, and they disappear after running over the spots a couple times, but this makes the stain a little uneven in the areas that need to be sanded. When I've gone back over it to add color back to those spots, I end up with more small dings I have to sand out.

My (very amateur) belief is that due to maple being a hard, closed grain wood, maybe it's taken as much stain as it can and these are uneven spots where stain is just sitting on the existing stain and not being absorbed properly. Also, what would be my best approach? I'm thinking I may just need to reapply stain across the body, and then lightly sand the whole body, instead of just those areas, to get an even color and just leave it as is once I'm done and apply finish after it dries. I was also thinking (possibly insanely), to lightly apply stain with a high grit sand paper to apply stain while also preventing these spots from appearing, but I wanted to check with you brilliant folks first.

Thank you in advance for any advice!