Yes.

I've used Roland brains with both Hart Dynamics and Yamaha DTXpress pads successfully.

It will take a little bit of tweaking to make the pads respond well, but you can find most of that information in the manual for the brain, and over at the vdrums.com forum.

Was watching CMT (by accident) and noticed the drummer was using mesh heads on an acoustic kit ... conversion kit! That would be another option because mesh heads are easy to come by, but the learning curve (learning how/where to put triggers) is a beast.

Don't know why, but conversion kits always seem more appealing to me than true e-kits. Maybe it's because in live settings, the only people who know they're e-drums are the drummers cringing at the cymbal samples.

The brain is where most of the control is.  Pads are just triggers.  The tweaking between the brain and the trigger sensitivities is the balance.  Some pads are more responsive than others, but some of that can be "corrected" by tweaking the brain.

RE: the mesh heads on the CMT drum kit.....
Are you sure it wasn't a "lip-sync" gig and the mesh heads were there for silencing the kit?  Just a thought.

Here's one converted kit:

I'm currently bidding on a cymbal on eBay and now you've got me kind of freaked.