Have to say here it depends on your definition of solo able - While the bard can indeed solo and there are ways to make it work so you can melee things down -- their true power to level comes from the ability to kite a number of mobs in circles taking them out with an AE song. Bard epic required dragon scale drops as a key part which means you are either going to buy them or get with a raid type guild and hope to get in on kills.
One melee class that wasn't on your list which is fun to play can go around killing stuff solo fairly well given time but yes better gear means better solo capability is the Monk. Even though it has no spells, the ability to FD and heal self though mend make it a nice class that can be self reliant. One of the monks drawbacks is its low weight limit to maintain its added AC bonus, though with some wt. reducing bags and smart play you can deal with it and the limit grows as you do. If you do decided on a monk, I would suggest the iksar for their regen again a way to help sustain your soloing and help minimized downtime, though the tradeoff is you are hated everywhere but your starting city. The faction issue can be a bit of a challenge but you have control over how much you really want NPC's to like you. Monk epic is doable given time, though I've heard of some paying for parts to speed them up (like the one from Chardok) but I think that was mainly because the zone was being so widely camped by certain folks taking out much of the zone.
I can't really speak about how the other classes you mentioned solo in 99 exactly but often when speaking of soloing it isn't just a straight up melee fight, there are tricks involved -- bard swarming or fear kiting, sk fear kiting, ranger fear kiting animals or root and shoot with bow or run and shoot -- I forget how the mechanic works exactly. Not certain on paladins aside from saying that them vs undead and using stuns and heal is their strong point that come to mind.
Hope that brief overview sparks a better idea or addition discussion towards your choice.
Oh and I saw a recent post asking about monk gear with about a 1k budget which isn't too bad to throw at a starting alt without making a major commitment.
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