Who needs valves when you can have tubes
Seriously though, in my very humble opinion, it's either tubes or mosfets if you like acoustic music. Bipolar transistors tend to mess with timing and produce distortions (overlaid harmonics) that are very different from real-world acoustic distortions, like sound waves diffracting around obstacles.
Then again, I love LS3/5a's, so take this for what it's worth
Cheers
Steffen.