Sorry, Fleetwood, I didn't ever experience that problem with a blacked-out render. Actually, thinking about it, this method I posted as working was fine in an older build, maybe around 3-5 years ago when I was having problems with fake grass being chopped at some render buckets, there's probably been some significant changes to the program that bring about this black screen problem since then, I haven't tried it recently. :/
I think, if the tolerance setting in the surface doesn't fix the cut-off issue, you'd maybe be better just using a different default AA level that doesn't cross the displacements, or editing the bucket sizes(probably better) to the same effect. Sorry.